
Sorry to Crush Your Dreams, but We’re Not Colonizing Space Anytime Soon - dredmorbius
https://www.tor.com/2018/10/05/sorry-to-crush-your-dreams-but-were-not-colonizing-space-anytime-soon/
======
curtis
We haven't really colonized Antarctica either, but there's been a permanent
human presence there since the 1940s or 1950s.

Similarly, I don't know if it makes sense to colonize Mars, but I think it
makes absolute sense to have permanent bases there. With a human presence on
Mars we will learn things about that planet in years that will otherwise take
many decades through robotic exploration.

~~~
Koshkin
With the “singularity” just around the corner robots will surpass humans as
explorers by the time it’s decided to set up a base on Mars.

~~~
dogma1138
Singularity is around the corner every time someone speaks of it with no clear
indications that we are anywhere closer to it than 40 years ago.

~~~
RikNieu
AFAIK its always been pegged at around 2045. Also, 49 years ago? Pretty sure
Kurzweil hadn't written the book that long ago...

------
credit_guy
Here's a killer app for a Moon base: telescopes. Optical or radio-telescopes.
Right now, we, the humankind, are willing to spend about $10 BN to put a
telescope (James Webb) in a deep space orbit [1]. It might or might not get
there in 2021, about 25 years after the start of the project. It will have a
mirror with collecting area of 25 sqm, which is quite large, but substantially
smaller than a lot of existing and planned Earth based telescopes that come at
a much lower cost [2]. For example the European Extremely Large Telescope will
have a collecting area of 978 sqm and cost about $1.5 BN [3].

A Moon-based telescope would marry the benefits of a space telescope (no
perturbations caused by the atmosphere), with the benefits of being able to
build on solid ground. Gravity is actually quite helpful if you need to keep a
large structure well aligned. But not too much gravity, else it's getting hard
to erect the building. The gravity on the Moon (one sixth of ours) may be the
sweet spot.

Oh, and half of the time, you have a huge mass of rock between you and the
Sun, which is quite helpful to reduce background noise. If you are worried
about the light reflected by the Earth, then a quarter of the time you are
facing away from both the Sun and the Earth, to get one of the darkest nights
imaginable. And no radio polution at all, if you prefer to use a radio-
telescope. Did I mention that radio-telescopes have a collecting area that put
optical telescopes to shame? For example the Green Bank Telescope [4] has a
collecting area of 9300 sqm.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_optical_reflec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_optical_reflecting_telescopes#/media/File:Comparison_optical_telescope_primary_mirrors.svg)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bank_Telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bank_Telescope)

~~~
kkarakk
>the lack of an atmosphere would prove very damaging. Without the buffering of
air around drilling tools, dynamic friction will be amplified during drilling
tasks, generating huge amounts of heat. Drill bits and rock will fuse,
hindering progress. Should demolition tasks need to be carried out, explosions
in a vacuum would create countless high velocity missiles tearing through
anything in their path, with no atmosphere to slow them down. (You wouldn’t
want to be eating dinner in an inflatable habitat during mining activities
should a rock fragment be flying your way…) Also, the ejected dust would
obscure everything and settle, statically, on machinery and contaminate
everything.

[taken from [https://www.universetoday.com/12726/building-a-base-on-
the-m...](https://www.universetoday.com/12726/building-a-base-on-the-moon-
challenges-and-hazards/)]

I can't imagine keeping those telescopes free of dust will be a trivial task
even if you somehow manage to install them without issues - maybe you're
imagining a single mobile package deployed to the moon ala the mars rover?

~~~
credit_guy
Very nice link, thank you.

Yes, building anything on the Moon won't be easy. Let me just add here some
other obstacle not mentioned elsewhere: you can't build a "spaceport" on the
Moon. Every lunar landing will result in lots of debris flying at bullet speed
for kilometers without any air to brake it. More precisely, some of the debris
will acquire escape velocity, some less, so some will end up thousands of
kilometers from the landing site.

But that doesn't mean solutions can't be found. I personally envision a
telescope being covered by a dome with retractable foil layers. During the
day, when you face the unobstructed Sun (and the solar wind), you cover up.
You use several concentric shells, with a small pressure differential between
them, so any small (or large) hole causes only a small leak, rather than a
catastrophic rupture. Inside the inner shell you have some atmosphere to help
you deal with dust, but it does't need to be 1 atm, it can be 0.01 atm, for
example. As the foils get punctured by micrometeorites or the aforementioned
particles kicked up at landings, you repair them and ultimately replace them
on some rotating basis. If regular airlocks can't fully deal with the lunar
just, use multi-level airlocks. Etc, etc. I think pretty much all the problems
will have solutions.

The only question is what benefit we get out of it, apart from the vague
desire to colonize the space? Andy Weir in Artemis only thought of tourism,
and (no spoiler) some other application that seems quite unlikely.

I personally think telescopes are a better business proposal. I did not think
of all the details, but since you ask, I think a mobile package would be a
natural first step, and then if it works, a modular solution would be a second
one. Many years later, we could end up building the instruments themselves on
site, but until then, we'd probably need to bring them from the Earth.

~~~
sliken
Seems silly to worry about such tiny little details. We are going to get
countless tons of equipment to the moon and you are worried about some debris
flying around?

How just having a clean landing pad? I was going to say it's not rocket
science, but it is. With gravity being significantly lower, landings will be
correspondingly lower energy affairs.

Also keep in mind that without an atmosphere there will be significantly
higher energy micrometeorites with significant velocities. Those are the
threats you need to design around, not some shuttle landing in 1/6th gravity.

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Koshkin
You’ve got to realize how much entropy we are creating on the planet we live
on just to survive. We cannot afford that on a spaceship, or even on a small
artificial planet. (Natural planets are a little better in that regard, but
not a lot, considering what is “available”.)

------
fastball
"If you can't do it perfectly don't do it at all".

Nope, not buying it.

~~~
Koshkin
“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." \- G. K. Chesterton

~~~
astrodust
"Not everything worth doing is worth doing well."

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singularity2001
Turn the Sahara and Antarctica into paradise, or at least install completely
autonomous capsules there and report back.

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Razengan
So what ARE we doing?

Where are we going?

Should we just keep pouring our economy and resources into our militaries and
espionage until...what?

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beerlord
I don't think it matters whether there are humans in space or not. As long as
we establish some kind of research or industry up there.

We already know of certain types of manufacturing which is more effective or
even made possible in zero-g (fiber optic as one example). Plus we can despoil
the area with fewer negative consequences due to the lack of a biosphere.

Next the extraction of elements that are only available in low quantities on
Earth, or which are too expensive to lift into space.

Until these operations expand to such a level that zero-latency human
oversight is required, they can probably be managed safely and cheaply from
Earth.

~~~
throwaway2048
Any amount of money you could possibly hope to save from polluting, would be
massively offset by the other truly titanic costs.

------
patagonia
Don’t care. Gotta start somewhere. Sometime.

~~~
inawarminister
the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.

The second best is today.

~~~
twiceaday
Ten years ago is a better time to plant a tree than today. In fact, today is
the worst time in history to plant a tree.

