[vannrox]

A very interesting article.

[mhking]

Only a few years late....

[Brett66]

Instead of permanent colonies, astronauts would visit the base in 45-day jaunts. While they were there, the moon-goers would stay in an inflatable home envisioned by Kriss Kennedy, the master architect at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

Really? This is the first I've seen or heard of these designs. I think Boeing's modular inflatable designs are the most realistic I've seen at this early stage.

[Vesuvian]

I say construct Moonbase Alpha

(and I want to zip around in an Eagle!)

[RightWingAtheist]

From a story by Heinlein:

[unibrowshift9b20]

Why don't we get some orbiting mirrors, made out of reflective fabric that is super thin and super light and point them to converge at some water on the moon that boils and turns a generator to make electrical power. If you don't want to use a regular old fission reactor that is. That would be lots easier than fields and fields of inefficient, more-$/mass-than-gold-solar cells. But all this may be moot shortly after its actually built if fusion is that close.

If you used orbiting mirrors or fusion, you could basically get all the energy you could ever imagine needing. Electolyze your frozen water, make O2 for breathing, H2 and O2 for rocket fuel.

Heck, you could eventually make some REALLY big mirrors that you could use to heat up the whole moon if you wanted, or light up the dark side. That would be awesome.

[WOSG]

"Lunar bases became a way to get past our oil dependency," Launius said. The plan was to build solar panels the size of football fields on the moon, which would capture the sun's rays and turn them into electricity. Then the electricity would be converted into microwaves and beamed back to Earth.

Other than making electricity at absorbitant cost - like maybe $10 a kilowatt hour, this is a useless idea. The other ideas are similarly non-economic.

[hopespringseternal]

Project Horizon called for 61 Saturn I and 88 Saturn II rocket launches to bring 490,000 pounds of cargo to the lunar surface over the course of a year or so.

Launch technology scales up really well, if you have the right mentality. It is like moving dirt. For your flowerbed, a spade is fine. For trees, you need a shovel. For roads, you need front end loaders and dump trucks.

We've never really gone any farther than the shovel, and that is why nothing interesting has ever happened with space.

If we are going to continue to use expendable rockets and semi-salvageable shuttles, our current endeavors are about the right size.

If we ever want to accomplish anything, fully reusable SSTO and/or laser launchers are what's needed. The problem is we don't do enough to justify either, and can't do enough until we have either or both.

Both are technologically possible, and economically unviable.