
Why getting back to the moon is so damn hard - mkm416
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610720/why-getting-back-to-the-moon-is-so-damn-hard/
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eesmith
"the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo program would cost about $1.16
billion"

The US military budget is over $500 billion per year. Cut 10% of the military
spending and we could send a few missions to the Moon each year.

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rwmj
I always think it might have turned out better if the US hadn't tried to land
a man on the moon. Instead if the goal had been to place a space station in
permanent orbit around the moon. The USSR would have also been capable of this
(even using Soyuz technology), leading to a permanent manned presence from
both sides, and inevitable incremental development of the technology to keep
people there.

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jandrese
What's the use of a lunar orbiting space station though? What science can you
do in orbit of the moon that you can't do in orbit of the Earth?

Building a space station in Low Earth Orbit nearly killed NASA's budget for 20
years. Lofting all of that mass to lunar orbit would have added considerably
to the cost. At least with the landers we got to bring back some regolith.

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rwmj
It doesn't need a use when two superpowers are using it as a proxy for war.
What "use" did the Space Race have?

> Lofting all of that mass to lunar orbit would have added considerably to the
> cost.

Sure, but when you have to do it to keep up with a Space Race, you have 5% of
your country's output being used to apply brains to the problem.

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CryoLogic
These are all rockets. What happened to attempts and more permanent space
launch fixtures like:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator)

I am under the impression many other methods of getting into space have been
hypothesized but never attempted.

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headcanon
A space elevator is a long ways off - assuming that human interest in space
continues and technology develops at similar rates to today, I wouldn't expect
something like that to be constructed for at least a couple centuries.
Hopefully I'm wrong, I'd love to see something like that, but a project of
that sort would make the space station look like a dinky house-boat in terms
of scale and complexity. As crappy as rockets are, I expect we will continue
to be using them for the duration of our lifespans.

~~~
credit_guy
What do you think about space elevators for asteroid mining? A large asteroid
has a non-negligible escape velocity (e.g. for Ceres it's 500m/s), so taking
stuff from them via regular rockets requires a significant amount of fuel. On
the other hand, a space elevator could just be possible with our current
materials and technology.

~~~
headcanon
I think a mass driver in most cases would be simpler and more economical. We
would use them on earth if we didn't need to worry about the atmosphere.

A Space elevator would require that the body spins fast enough that the
centripetal acceleration would equal the gravitational acceleration. Ceres
spins roughly every 9 hours - I haven't done the math but that seems like it
could work in that case, but even so I would still vote mass driver.

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Animats
Because $20 million is about 0.05% of what Apollo cost.

The rocket equation still applies. You still need a huge booster, and prices
haven't improved all that much.

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ourmandave
The first time we went was motivated (and funded) by the Cold War. Now someone
has to come up with a viable business model.

I'm not smart enough to come up with one. Space tourism for the super rich?

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Cobord
I liked the idea of helium mining. Even if we couldn't ship it back, it could
be used remotely for the applications that require liquid helium cooling.
We're running out of helium, and sometimes liquid nitrogen doesn't cut it.

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SamUK96
As a somewhat partial astrophysicist, remembering the increasing scarcity of
helium on Earth is always amusing. It's the second most abundant element in
the universe, after all. It's just that when you are near a star, light
elements are easily heated and move away quickly towards the oort cloud and
interstellar space.

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gizmodo59
Is there any reason why I cannot view this in In-Cognito/In-Private mode?

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tomxor
> Is there any reason why I cannot view this in In-Cognito/In-Private mode?

They want to track you to count articles you have read:

> Visitors are allowed 3 free articles per month (without a subscription), and
> private browsing prevents us from counting how many stories you've read. We
> hope you understand, and consider subscribing for unlimited online access.

However you can easily defeat this by:

A) Using a different browser session and just clearing it once you read 3
(they don't appear to be using advanced tracking).

B) The article is still actually sent, just remove the div in the body element
with class "incognito-wall", then click on the body element and remove the
"overflow: hidden" style.

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tjoff
C) Don't bother visit that site at all. I pretty much always surf incognito.
Everything I know about that site is that they refuse to serve me.

Because of it I don't have the slightest interest to read anything from that
site.

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Ronnie_boy556
All it takes is someone to fund it..

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sunseb
What if we never went to the moon the first in the first place? I am joking of
course, but I think it's weird we went to the moon in 1969 and in 2018 we
can't do that anymore.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One)

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rndmize
What part of this is "can't"? No one wants to spend the money, end of story.

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sunseb
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA)

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kentm
Sorry, can you elaborate on the point you are trying to make?

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perl4ever
People may think of, say, the Hubble space telescope as being a big deal and
costing a lot, but when you realize there were lots of similar ones, only they
were classified spy satellites, it puts into perspective how small NASA's
budget is.

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eip
Surviving outside the Van Allen belt would require your spaceship to have 4ft
thick lead walls.

I assume that is a big part of it.

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24gttghh
This is mostly incorrect. The Van Allen belt is not some protective shield
from radiation, it is an area of _concentrated_ radiation. There is radiation
exposure once you exit the sphere of Earth's magnetic field, but I believe it
is lower energy than the belt's themselves.

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eip
>it is lower energy than the belt's themselves

Doesn't mean you can survive in it.

A dental x-ray is probably lower energy than the belts too but if you sit in
front of one for 6 hours you will likely regret it.

