The Moon Or Mars…Which Shall It Be?

Space.com ^ | 1/28/02 | Leonard Davis

[hattend]

I vote Moon. Permanent bases this time. We can go to Mars from the moon.

[RightWhale]

A possible key to the moon base is to import methane.

[colorado tanker]

Go for Mars. I bet we find out modern-day liberals are descendants of Martians who fled here after they trashed their own planet.

[Registered]

Well, we definitely need your input here.

[Physicist]

It would do more to put the nail in the coffin as to how unique life is or how common," O'Handley said.

A peculiar choice of metaphor, that.

[E Rocc]

Neither one is likely to happen any time soon. For self-sustaining bases, energy would probably have to be 10 to 100 times cheaper.

It is already. Solar power is practical on the moon, unlike Earth. There's no atmosphere to absorb almost all of it like there is here.

Space travel is essential eventually. Not only does it give us other places to go if something happens to Earth, but it makes it practical to deflect junk that might hit us.

-Eric

[hopespringseternal]

It is already. Solar power is practical on the moon, unlike Earth. There's no atmosphere to absorb almost all of it like there is here.

Space travel is essential eventually. Not only does it give us other places to go if something happens to Earth, but it makes it practical to deflect junk that might hit us.

Solar power isn't quite the panacea when you are talking about two weeks of night per month. You really need cheap nukes. That isn't technically that hard, but politically it is nearly impossible.

Here, a lot of our needs are met by our environment by really neat von Neumann machines. ;) In other words, our air, water, and food are largely provided by solar power here already.

Go anywhere else and try to be self-sustaining and you will see what a huge problem that is. And being economically self-sustaining is a pipe dream right now.

To top that off, we can't even muster the political support or economic justification for the transportation infrastructure needed, much less the other problems.

[gcruse]

"To da moon, Alice!"
       --- Ralph Cramden

   Actually, no.  Mars.  The moon
is so September tenth.

[The_Victor]

Until there is an influx of cash, from either commercial profitability, or a renewed government commitment, we'll be doing neither.