Charles Krauthammer examines whether a moon mission is a worthwhile pursuit in the Washington Post today. He concludes that it certainly is. He points out that the space shuttles were a diversion. He's both right and wrong on that, I think.
You might not have noticed, but we broke another U.S. space record last month when astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria logged his 67th hour of spacewalking. If you consider that the equivalent of the Guinness record for pogo-stick bouncing (23.11 miles in 12 hours and 27 minutes) — amazing but pointless — I agree with you. There's nothing quite as beautiful as the space station and the shuttle that services it, and nothing quite as useless.
Now, that can be said of many things: a balance-beam dismount, a Shakespeare sonnet, a chess problem by Nabokov. But none of these is financed by taxpayers, and none makes a claim to utility. They are there for reasons of aesthetics, and perhaps amusement……
…….The Luddites have long opposed manned exploration as a waste of resources when, as the mantra goes, we have so many problems here on Earth.
I find this objection incomprehensible. When will we stop having problems here on Earth? In a fallen world of endless troubles, that does not stop us from allocating resources to endeavors we find beautiful, exciting and elevating — opera, alpine skiing, feature films — yet solve no social problems.
Moreover, the moon base is not pointless. The shuttles were on an endless trip to the nowhere of low Earth orbit. The moon is a destination. The idea this time is not to go to plant a flag, take a golf shot and leave, but to stay and form a real self-sustaining, extraterrestrial human colony.
Sure, Mars would be better. It holds open the possibility of life and might even have water on its surface today. But the best should not be the enemy of the good. Mars is simply too far, too dangerous, too difficult, too expensive. We won't go there for a hundred years.
Unlike Krauthammer, I think the shuttle program has accomplished a number of things. One of those has been to keep a space program functioning, even if it was on a stunted basis that stayed in low orbit. But we should have been on the moon to stay by this time, too. There is absolutely no way to tell what a moon base will actually accomplish. But the possibilities are endless. If we get there and stay there, we will find ways to exploit it fully. Entrepreneurs are already – finally – stepping in to take up the low orbital stuff. Let NASA pioneer again with a moon colony and those businessmen will surely follow on and make the venture pay.
The Space Shuttle and the ISS have been mired in politics and NASA empire-building for far too long, but they have accomplished important things. The Hubble Telescope could never have been deployed or repaired without the Space Shuttle. The ISS has demonstrated the ability to sustain long-term operations in orbit, as well as pioneering orbital construction techniques. Both are necessary for manned exploration to other planets.
All that being said, you are entirely correct in saying that it is time to move to the next phase. NASA is stuck in neutral and, according to my friends who work there, has lost the creative edge it has in the early days. That is the first thing that must change.
There are many practical advantages for having a base on the moon. Imagine someone in a long zero-G mission … they can make a stop at the moon to get used to gravity before going back to Earth. Also, life is a little better where there is some gravity. Your sinuses drain properly, for example. You can set something on a table and it will stay there. You can play cards and checkers and sit in a chair. When you drop something, you know where it goes … DOWN. At the same time the moon is great for certain kinds of manufacturing where you don’t want atmospheric contamination. The moon’s crust contains a lot of titanium, it might make a great place to manufacture small precision titanium components.
Also, if you are sending things out of Earth orbit, the moon makes a great launch pad. Normally rockets get a boost from the Earth’s rotational speed. The rotational velocity of the Earth is a little less than 500 meters/sec. The orbital velocity of the moon is about 1000 meters/sec. A rocket launched from the moon gets about twice the “starting” velocity boost if launched from the moon in addition to not having to push its way through the atmosphere. That also means that a rocket doesn’t experiance maximum buffeting (or any buffeting) from shockwaves when it reaches the speed of sound. It doesn’t need to be streamlined and have all kinds of fairings to make it aerodynamic either. So, we can use smaller and lighter launch vehicles to get probes and manned missions out of earth orbit from the moon than we could from Earth.
Craters on the far side could be turned into the best and most sensative radio telescopes imaginable. They form a natural parabolic shape in which to build a receiving antenna. The moon is a great place for optical telescopes too without using fuel and gyroscopes and reaction wheels to keep them stable.
The benefits of the moon are untapped and many.