Moon Base or Manned Asteroid Missions

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Yeah, but simply making the Biosphere work wont be enough. It needs to be done from scratch with the sole intention of replicating setup on the moon. Which includes using the absolute minimum equipment/materials, speedy construction (including the housing itself), minimal men requirement.

Basically everything to get it up there, built, and selfsustaining with the absolute minimum cost. Having a working Biosphere is all well and good, but if a funtional, self-sustaining environment cant be constructed and running in a very short period of time, nothing will happen.

That said, there are other benefits that can be gleaned from existing biosphere stuff.

 

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This is turning into an interesting thread with very good points being raised.

The moon is seen as the valid next big steeping stone - so what needs to be done...?

1. Transportation.

Firstly, as an interesting side note, the Space 1999 Eagle lunar ships are a good example of what a trans lunar shuttle could look like, as they have design advantages over single vector craft like a traditional Apollo style lander.

Basically this is as you can get the heavy load down low for a low gravity non staged craft whereas for an Earth to orbit craft it needs to be vertical rocket or orbitor style to get escape velocity / minimise atmospheric drag.

Also the orbitting of the moon can be tricky due to the moon's fixed face / non rotation, so the fuel costs can be high, so payload volumes now come into play, there is advantages with using larger craft than a standard appollo era lander. (The new lander will be considerably bigger for this reason)

Another concern for space transport is the finite nozzle velocity of about 20km per sec for standard rocket engines used today to move good sized payloads. Ion drives give higher velocities at the nozzle but they dont move the mass so well.

The reusability of rockets engines is a key here as the trans-lunar rockets would need high reuseability whereas the Earth rockets reuseability percentage (shuttle to new launcher) is actually going down due to costs and complexity issues.

Of course there is stuff like space elevators to consider also, but there are design limitations with materials even though it could work longterm. A space elevator is also problematic for the moon given its fixed side facing Earth all the time.

Incidently, in the longer term Mars would be a better proposition for a space elevator as it is smaller than the Earth and rotates in a similar manner/time period, so a elevator would be both easier and safer than an Earth based elevator. Any rocket based craft entering the Mars atmosphere is going to have problems, as the atmosphere is too thin for an shuttle type craft to work well, and also too thick to allow a lander to operate safely.

2. Moon habitation.

The whole lunar facility would need to be protected and have access to water if it is around. Water availability, UV and radiation protection, and atmosphere conservation would be the key initial survival concerns on the moon. This could mean an underground facility for the most part with underground tunnels lined with plastic liners, as a few feet of dirt or rock over the base could determine the survival of the colonists.

Obviously the landing pad, equipment lockers and garden domes need to be at least partly above ground, but everything else may well be buried.

The soil from the moon has been shown to be abrasive and contain high volumes of sulphurs, so they have to be removed before they get anywhere near being good enough to support plants. This would be require either a solar furnace - which is needed for a metals/water/ oxygen refinery anyhow or a leaching process that would most likely require scarce water.

Then a garden dome would need to be built to keep in some [but not 14psi] atmospheric pressure, moisture and heat in and most of the UV out. The inital soil would have to be mostly from the earth and processed lunar soil with organic waste from astronauts, organic food waste and initally hardy plants carefully added in over a period of time.

The whole process is one of establishing a critical mass to get the base to survive, it would all take several years to get even basic progress, but would be invaluable to getting out to say Mars and the other planets moons on a long term basis.

 

I'm pleased to see this poll and thread "go the distance". I remember the early Mercury and Gemini projects from when I was a kid in the 1960s and I have to admit, the whole idea of manned space exploration is a very nostalgic subject for me.

I understand that robot missions are a lot less expensive than manned missions but ultimately, there is only so much a machine can learn...even when it is remotely controlled from Earth such as the Mars rovers. While I don't know if we'll ever successfully be able to live in permanent colonies on the Moon or other planets, I definitely thing the universe is well worth exploring and will yield its own rewards.

I guess I have bought into the whole "Gene Roddenberry" philosophy that as human beings, our time and resources are better spent if we all band together in the common exploration of the universe around us than to fight over a few pieces of real estate here on Earth. I admit that's an ideal and probably not one we'll ever see come to fruition, but it doesn't mean we should give up the effort.

 

Just saw an item at Slashdot called NASA Vets & Administration Clash Over Moon Plans containing various links to information related to this issue. Thought it might be of interest to some.

 

If I can only pick one, it would be the Lunar Base. The Asteroid Missions can be done using unmanned craft in the short term.

My main reasons are:

• the base can be used as a technology testbed for very-long duration missions.
• the crew can be easily rescued if things go wrong.
• space tourism - which could be an important commercial driver for a proper space program