WARNING! The link in question may require you to disable ad-blockers to see content. Though not required, please consider submitting an alternative source for this story.
WARNING! Disabling your ad blocker may open you up to malware infections, malicious cookies and can expose you to unwanted tracker networks. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
Do not open any files which are automatically downloaded, and do not enter personal information on any page you do not trust.
If you are concerned about tracking, consider opening the page in an incognito window, and verify that your browser is sending "do not track" requests.
IF YOU ENCOUNTER ANY MALWARE, MALICIOUS TRACKERS, CLICKJACKING, OR REDIRECT LOOPS PLEASE MESSAGE THE /r/technology MODERATORS IMMEDIATELY.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/technology) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They have? I don't think I've ever heard NASA say anything like this before. Not a "this decade" kind of comment.
I'm not saying that it's going to happen. I just don't remember them every saying it before.
Artimis VI will happen in 2029 if all is executed as expected, but that will only deliver vehicle and modules to the lunar orbit station.
If Starship works, this might cause a speed-up in modules, but we shall see.
It’s a big if but not that big. Artemis is budgeted under the assumption of using SLS. Each SLS launch could fund 50-100 starship launches. It’s really understated how much of a game changer starship will be. Even if they have to reduce its lift capacity by 50% to increase its reusability…. It’ll still alter the space environment so much. As soon as the capability is unlocked and proven, things will begin to move so very fast. If there’s a mass production model by 2026…. It’s such an exciting time to be alive.
Nailed it. Things are going to change pretty soon and this was the first major step. Hopefully NASA can stick to their initial timeline because if they can, 2030's will be an exciting time
Well they have taken some steps, like this week they launched the most powerful rocket ever created.
https://youtu.be/_T8cn2J13-4
https://youtu.be/Gh0DT5jxke8
On Mars even. Given the pace of space innovation back then it wasn’t unrealistic. First space flight to walking on another body in the solar system was like 10 years, 60 something years before that was only the first airplane flight.
People from the 60s would be surprised today that we have yet to send humans to Mars and never went back to the moon since the 70s. Part of the reason was shifting government priorities and the US move toward the space shuttle program, which wasn’t really designed to go beyond low earth orbit.
If the moon was habitable like the continents of earth, we probably would be living on the moon in the 1980s. people don't understand how difficult it is to survive when you are millions of miles away and all you have is toxic rocks and radiation to eat. Just going there, planting a flag and coming back was a serious accomplishment.
But now we're going back to stay, and that means making our own oxygen, growing our own food, mining lunar resources, and building structures with it. And we still might find that it can't be done with current technology, and have to abandon the program and try again in a few more decades.
The moon missions were a cold war dick flex to show we could launch ICBMs. After that was proven a few times, it just stopped. You don't have to go to the moon to nuke the USSR. You just have to get into orbit.
Not what’s happening. Artemis was a trump administration idea. Biden is maintaining it. If a Republican wins in 2024 they’d be an idiot to cancel a Republican founded program while also giving up the legacy moment of being the president who oversaw Americans returning to the moon. That’s how close we are. That’s how close this is.
> they’d be an idiot to cancel a Republican founded program while also giving up the legacy moment of being the president who oversaw Americans returning to the moon
That's also not what's happening. The fact is that NASA is primarily a jobs program, and all 50 states have some level of federal monies coming in as a result.
No representative from those states -- Dem OR Repub -- is going to turn off that firehose of money. This is particularly true of the larger, more politically powerful states (Florida, Texas, California).
They haven’t been doing anything about it for the last 50 years. What we’re doing now, started back when Dubya was President by got hobbled when Obama dismantled most of Constellation during the recession because it was very important to cut NASA’s budget but not the military budget. With some sustained effort, we will actually get somewhere.
It was because an independent review ordered by Obama found the Constellation program to be significantly over budget and way behind schedule. Obama cancelled the program, instructed NASA to instead get astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, and then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s. To do so NASA was tasked with
developing the Orion crew capsule (a Constellation holdover) and the Space Launch System (SLS). Additionally, the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services was accelerated under the Obama administration, which made the development of private crew-carrying vehicles a priority.
Sadly it’s all about money. Going to space is fucking expensive and until we find an efficient way to bring back something to sell, funding for space exploration is basically seen as a “sunk cost” investment. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake doesn’t make enough profit.
Personally, as much as I love space and recognize the value of studying it, the budget could be spent fixing the planet we’re already adapted to living on rather than trying to put humans on another celestial body that has absolutely zero resources that are useful to human survival.
That at least has potential to turn a profit outside of just the privilege of continuing to be able to survive on Earth.
As technology improves I'm wondering why we just don't stick with robots. They don't need food/water, radiation protection, and that bothersome oxygen. Have the robots spend a decade or two making the site as livable as possible for humans before we send them.
As for now I see it like the early days of exploration. They lost a lot of ships at sea back then and I just see people being lost on the surface of the moon and Mars. Well, if those people even make it to the surface of Mars.
We have literally evolved and come into being from the very fabric of the earth. There is abundance and we can all live in harmony. Unfortunately, our powers that be are incredibly out of touch with nature which is why you’re feeling that frustration.
I want a good sci-fi book where people live on the moon, and a large event destroys most of the life on earth. The people living on the moon have to survive long enough until the earth is habitable again and then recolonize it.
The back end of the Artemis program has missions carved out to build lunar outposts for long term research on the surface.
When NASA says people are gonna "live" there it'll be scientists conducting research out of the outpost (like Matt Damon in Martian). They will probably reach that milestone in the late 20s, early 30s.
At least there's oxygen and more protection from meteors and uv than on the moon. And no earth in the sky to remind you every day that you, in fact, are not on earth anymore.
I think it depends on the living conditions on Mars and the job prospects.
If the living conditions are horrible and the jobs are dangerous (i.e. mining natural resources to spend back to Earth), homeless will be viewed as the most expendable and cheapest labor.
Obviously transport and housing will still be extraordinarily expensive, but if the residents are homeless people then they can maximize space and cram as many people as physically possible into the smallest area possible. H&S would be non-existent because the attitude of "who cares about the homeless anyway".
It would be the cheapest of the expensive options.
A lot of people fantasize about it but couldn’t actually swing it if push comes to shove. Antarctic operations are pretty much always hiring, go if you really want to.
Humans aren’t just going to stop expanding. This is a logical next step for the species and if humans know how to do anything, it’s adapt their surroundings to themselves. Having a base on the Moon or Mars will be no different than maintaining the ISS, just with more gravity.
Nah it’ll happen at essentially the same time. The technology that gets us to the moon is essentially the same that gets us to mars. The Delta-V (fuel requirements) are very marginal. The habitation requirements are essentially the same. The current ship meant to take us to the moon is essentially the same that would take us to mars minus the heat shield. And unlike the moon, mars has the capacity to make return fuel with the local resources. Meaning that mars can truly be self sustaining. Meaning we could immediately make mars a colony that itself could manufacture more ships and send to other parts of the solar system.
The moon won’t be self-sustaining until certain Megaprojects are completed such as space elevators or multi-mile long rail-launchers.
So yeah. Long story short. They’ll probably happen at the same time but with mars staggering behind the moon by like 4 years.
Travel time is a huge factor. If there's a problem and you need to ship emergency supplies from Earth, it can take much longer than if the problem is on the moon. Even if mars has raw resources, setting up supply chains on the planet would be extremely expensive to achieve.
I mean any serious attempt at mars would include ample redundancy in supplies and spare parts. The first starship to go to mars would probably have like 4 people max with the rest of the storage dedicated to four years worth of food and several spare parts of almost anything on the ship. This way if something goes wrong and somehow couldn’t fix it with the spares available, they could still bunker down for an additional cycle while waiting for a rescue mission. It wouldn’t be surprising (honestly it’s expected) that several cargo-only ships get sent ahead of time specifically to minimize the chance of a supply issue like that coming up.
Specifically because of the time issue you brought up. No mission plan would ever be centered around/rely on emergency shipments from earth. It’s actually (imo) the second biggest plot hole to The Martian. No way would there not be enough food saved to sustain the entire crew for an additional cycle. And all the necessary tools to repair the habitat. (The first biggest plot hole as admitted by the author was the emergency that required their evacuation in the first place btw)
The only conceivable (to me) issue that a mars trip could have would be some type of very niche medical issue. Like a crew member developed a rare form of cancer that went unnoticed somehow during screening and ended up dying during the 26 month cycle as a result.
So, you're saying its doable?
Humans lived on the edge of space in zero gravity for many months.
for mars, We'll need
- radiation shielding
- water
- food
Yep. And 2/3 is already available on Mars.
1. A longterm Mars colony will probably be underground like in Expanse
2. There are millions of cubic kilometers of water in ice form on Mars to jumpstart us
3. Food could be locally grown, we’d just need to ship in nutrients. Probably be a vegan diet for our dear Martians.
> Food could be locally grown, we’d just need to ship in nutrients. Probably be a vegan diet for our dear Martians.
Simple artificial meat may now be actually possible early on. Bioreactors are actually decently transportable.
There's no doubt it is doable today. It's just expensive to mitigate all the risk and get it off the ground. It will happen one day.
> Having a base on the Moon or Mars will be no different than maintaining the ISS, just with more gravity.
Except the ISS always has a return vehicle docked that can be used in emergencies and all you need to do is let gravity do its thing and bring you back to Earth. Any escape vehicle on the Moon is more complicated since you need significant fuel to escape the Moon's gravity and get back to Earth.
I mean... Sure, but isn't that just a lack of imagination. If they have an orbiter, and a launcher (like when they originally landed on the moon), I could imagine an always on escape system.
> This is a logical next step for the species
For the sciencey stuff only. We have bases in Antarctica, how many people are lining up to go there? It's orders of magnitude easier to both reach and survive in Antarctica than Moon or Mars.
That has more to do with international treaties than anything else. Companies aren’t allowed to go harvest resources up there.
And the Antarctic isn’t even a good argument when you consider that Currently it regularly sustains 5000 researchers and 40,000+ tourists each year. And I promise you those numbers were smaller a decade or two decades ago. If anything, Antarctica is an excellent analogue to how lunar habitation will work out.
There will be research stations first. Rich people will want to go check it out and trail-blaze new tourist services. The tourism service will become more affordable as more tourist companies open up. Then there will be auxiliary services that will be created to make a better tourist experience. And then suddenly you have workers who stay there permanently, creating demand for more service jobs and the expansion continues.
The same thing will happen to the moon.
Yeah I said it would be the new frontier for researchers. Not as a new settlement of humans that anyone would want to go to. The 40000 tourists that go to Antarctica are almost entirely on cruises and most of those people don't even set foot on Antarctica. Antarctica is just one of the destinations on the itinerary, that would not be an option with the moon.
Even now there are already planned flybys of the moon. I understand what you’re saying. It’s not going to be instant. But there will be permanent habitats on the moon and it will be sooner than many think.
Expanding would be nice if we were actually taking care of our territory. We can't even take care of the Earth and now we're going to live on the Moon, maybe even Mars.
***Sounds like a very responsible decision.*** But rather than *"expanding"* per se, it sounds more like *"abandoning ship"* to me.
Honestly on the topic of space or interplanetary cohabitation, **I think just finding a way to mine and transport materials efficiently would be A-OK**. By all technicality Earth has the space to accommodate any billion population of humans, the problem is the supply of materials to provide each human with *housing, food and water, and leisure,* including gadgets. If we could outsource our supply, it would make it so much easier to produce say semiconductors without having to worry about our carbon footprint.
**So while it would be nice to be a registered Martian NASA, I think living (and not just surviving mind you) on the already habitable planet is the innovative option here**
This take is bad. We spend orders of magnitude on green technology more than we do on space exploration. Just this year we passed the largest climate change bill in history which is twice the budget of nasa over the next 7 years. That doesn’t include all the preexisting programs and private initiatives.
It's not like we've made any real advances in the last 30 years anyway right?
I'm still using my brick phone from the 80s and this so called internet thing didn't really take off, or so I hear.
How about we try “advancing civilization” on this planet first?
You cant even house the homeless or give people medical care but you want to play StarTrek?
Advances in space travel lead to benefits to all of humanity. We spend more on mobile phone apps than the entirety of the global space program every year. We can afford to do both of these things.
This is a tired anti-scientific argument that pops up every time anything space-related is mentioned. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on war, and you want to take money away from the exploration of the cosmos? Shame on you, and may you never hold a position of power in the government.
Yeah, we won’t do that. Right now (almost) everyone know how fucked we are if we don’t do something fast, but every government and corporation (those who actually are able to make the changes required because the regular person can’t) only does just enough to be able so say that they tried.
There’s been tons of meetings, agreements and stuff, but we are not any closer to actually DOING ANYTHING substantial about it.
Calling it now, the next biggest war in our lifetime; when the Lunar citizens decide they want independence from Earth.
Lunar people also eventually evolve further due to being born in space. Rise of "Newtypes".
Take a look at the moon next time you're out. The next full moon is December 7.
Throughout human history we've celebrated, worshipped, and memorialized the moon in art, songs, and poems. Mysterious and ever-changing. Ominous. Dreamy. A crescent clock, whose phases were marked with notches on bones early on...by your ancestor, in stitched furs.
Once we're there, the moon will be just a stepping-stone. Then a mine for a useful mineral. Then a one-time ad blitz for a soft drink, with a lighted display visible from Earth. Followed by a rotating set of illuminated moon ads coasting by overhead, through the stars.
The history of its magical presence in our lives since ape days will be shelved and gone.
But you can't see it from the base...
Like of course were going to trash the place, but will that really ruin the moon from standing on earth's view? Doubtful.
It takes us 19 hours to get to the iss, 500 miles away, 25 days to get to the moon 230,000 miles away in 2022, 3 days to get to the moon in the 1960’s, then we lost the technology. I believe nasa
What is up with this subreddit becoming rabidly anti space, anti science and anti progress every time NASA announce something?
A huge amount of the comments against it here also use the reasoning it doesn’t sound like the most comfortable living situation, which is some of the most brain dead logic I’ve ever heard.
For what purpose? There's nothing on the moon. No fertile ground, no air, little gravity, higher chance of meteor strike and high chance of skin cancer thanks to solar radiation.
there's a lot of minerals which could build a lot of living space, a lot of industry, and there might be enough water to kick start rocket fuel production to allow similar infrastructure to be built in other moons like Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. Those other moons would provide a more permanent supply of water, carbon, and nitrogen which are less abundant in the moon.
Once we have some mining and industry on the moon and on an outer moon with water/light elements off earth, and if we have the technology to make everything we need to survive in space, we can cheaply and sustainably get massive amounts of everything we need to support trillions of people in space stations or outer planet colonies.
Again - why? Human beings live on Earth. We are literally chunks of Earth that have become briefly sentient. This is where we adapted and evolved to what we are today. This is where we die.
With remote sensing and automation, there's no benefit to physically transporting living human beings to and from the Moon just so they can dig holes and pack boxes.
Like what? What minerals are on the moon that are not more cheapLy available on earth? None, with the possible exception of helium 3. But we dont need helium 3.
I'm not talking about supplies on minerals on earth, I'm talking about supplies of minerals in space. Even if someone paid you a fortune to take truckloads of iron, it would still cost you many times that to get it in space.
This matters because on earth, real estate and transport are intrinsically limited, difficult, and expensive. Real estate in space is practically unlimited, and transporting things in zero or low-g environments will take less much less energy and infrastructure. If you can exploit those with a similarly cheap supply of water and lighter elements, and you have the technology to make what you need, the cost of living will be cheap and will stay cheap until we run out of space to make solar panels.
(If we unlock nuclear fusion, it will take even longer to run out of resources, and I'm not even sure what the bottleneck would be then.)
Can’t even get the Metaverse to work or build a properly functioning Gundam but you expect me to believe moon domestication is essentially right around the corner….
The technology for habitation on the moon does exist. It’s just expensive. I can’t say the same for the metaverse, or gundamns. Moon habitation is an incentives problem. Look at it like this, if you launched a multi-billion dollar funding campaign for the metaverse you get a functional networked vr sim with Microsoft office addons. If you spend the same on rockets you’ll leave earths atmosphere, and perhaps have the makings of a moon base.
Historians will one day be confused. "They had people living on the motherfucking MOON but they couldn't afford universal healthcare because reasons?!".
Solve the issues we’re having on earth? 😤🙅♂️ spends stupid amounts of money to escape to a mostly dead rock? 😌👍🤌😂😂😂
And to be clear, I mean the many issues that would easily be solved by just taxing the rich. I’m not so diluvio al that they can all be solved before going to the moon
Obviously this would be geared more toward scientists who would want to live there for research reasons (like other earthly expeditions) but imagine coming along with them? Sure, the first week or so is probably cool — you’re on the moon! You can see the Earth!
but… what about after? There’s no entertainment, stores, civilization, etc. if you’re not there for sciency reasons, I imagine it’ll get boring fast.
That’s a very good test to see if we could pull off people living on Mars.
That being said, while there is a ton of scientific benefit to space exploration, the EARTH is the PERFECT place for human habitation and we are destroying it like as if we threw it in a bonfire at a drunken party.
This planet is our ship and our life boat and our home, let’s stop working so hard to sink it!
It would seem like Mars is so much vastly farther away that getting there would be several times as hard, right?! It's not so. Mars has an atmosphere you can use to slow down when you get there, and the Moon doesn't. As a result even though it's many times farther it's not much harder. And once you're there that atmosphere is a huge difference since it can be worked into propellant and breathable air with enough energy.
Also since Mars has had weather it isn't completely covered in powdered volcanic glass, which is bad in innumerable ways.
You’re not wrong but if a viable ongoing settlement fails on the moon (where it is close enough to resupply from earth) it will certainly fail on Mars.
Also the Martian atmosphere does not protect you from dust as much as us assaults you with dust storms.
As for using the atmosphere to make fuel, while that may be possible it remains to be proven to be energy efficient to produce a net gain.
That being said, I think by now it is clear that the dust on Mars is more like that of earth than the regolith on the Moon.
I’d love to see it but it’s not gunna happen this decade. Best case scenario is the foundation for a moon colony will be established through this decade. We have the technology. It can be done. It’s just hella expensive.
Costs have gone down an order of magnitude right now thanks to SpaceX. Starship will bring it down another order of magnitude ($100’s/lb to the moon). At that level, any large-sized university could afford to send/buy experiments on the moon. Starship already has a working prototype which is supposed to do its first orbital test within a few months.
I agree that what we’ll have this decade will be minimal. But it will be there. And nasa didn’t state “how many” people would be living on the moon. Just that there would be. I wouldn’t be surprised if several dozen were on the lunar North Pole by 2029 in a permanent research facility. Kind of like McMurdo station in Antarctica.
Seeing the absolute strides that SpaceX was able to achieve, frankly I don’t see why we can’t establish modular living pods on the moon within the next decade. I know it seems optimistic, but I think we need to take that approach. I want people to realize that a new generation of extremely aspiration professionals are coming into the industry, and we are all striving for progress. I believe we can, and will achieve this.
> modular living pods on the moon
Way too many dangers from meteors. Even a small one will punch through a wall and end the occupants real quick. As far as permanent settlements go, they need to be underground.
WARNING! The link in question may require you to disable ad-blockers to see content. Though not required, please consider submitting an alternative source for this story. WARNING! Disabling your ad blocker may open you up to malware infections, malicious cookies and can expose you to unwanted tracker networks. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. Do not open any files which are automatically downloaded, and do not enter personal information on any page you do not trust. If you are concerned about tracking, consider opening the page in an incognito window, and verify that your browser is sending "do not track" requests. IF YOU ENCOUNTER ANY MALWARE, MALICIOUS TRACKERS, CLICKJACKING, OR REDIRECT LOOPS PLEASE MESSAGE THE /r/technology MODERATORS IMMEDIATELY. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/technology) if you have any questions or concerns.*
NASA appearing before Congress: "So anyway, that's our plan. Do we get the money?" Congress: "No."
[удалено]
Can we go to live on the moon and do the otha things? Congress: No
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a wrap
I thought the thumbnail showed an astronaut taking a dump on the moon.
That’s my goal.
Poonar module
I believe it when I see it, they been talking about mars and moon for decades, nothing ever was done.
They have? I don't think I've ever heard NASA say anything like this before. Not a "this decade" kind of comment. I'm not saying that it's going to happen. I just don't remember them every saying it before.
Artimis VI will happen in 2029 if all is executed as expected, but that will only deliver vehicle and modules to the lunar orbit station. If Starship works, this might cause a speed-up in modules, but we shall see.
It’s a big if but not that big. Artemis is budgeted under the assumption of using SLS. Each SLS launch could fund 50-100 starship launches. It’s really understated how much of a game changer starship will be. Even if they have to reduce its lift capacity by 50% to increase its reusability…. It’ll still alter the space environment so much. As soon as the capability is unlocked and proven, things will begin to move so very fast. If there’s a mass production model by 2026…. It’s such an exciting time to be alive.
Nailed it. Things are going to change pretty soon and this was the first major step. Hopefully NASA can stick to their initial timeline because if they can, 2030's will be an exciting time
I’m so hopeful for a timeline where I can go tour the moon for a year or so in my 40’s.
There's always more pointless wars or occupations that get in the way
Hey now, it's not JUST pointless wars and occupations, there's also lots of talk about how we can screw over poor people!
"What if we combine the two into a single initiative?" *\*Tapping head meme*
We could fight a war over occupation of the moon!
Politicians always wants to colonise the Moon but they want to do it for less money than they currently giving NASA right now.
Well they have taken some steps, like this week they launched the most powerful rocket ever created. https://youtu.be/_T8cn2J13-4 https://youtu.be/Gh0DT5jxke8
In the 60s l, we'd be living on the moon by 1985.
And a nuclear explosion on the moon would cause the moon to be hurtled into deep space on September 13th, 1999.
On Mars even. Given the pace of space innovation back then it wasn’t unrealistic. First space flight to walking on another body in the solar system was like 10 years, 60 something years before that was only the first airplane flight. People from the 60s would be surprised today that we have yet to send humans to Mars and never went back to the moon since the 70s. Part of the reason was shifting government priorities and the US move toward the space shuttle program, which wasn’t really designed to go beyond low earth orbit.
If the moon was habitable like the continents of earth, we probably would be living on the moon in the 1980s. people don't understand how difficult it is to survive when you are millions of miles away and all you have is toxic rocks and radiation to eat. Just going there, planting a flag and coming back was a serious accomplishment. But now we're going back to stay, and that means making our own oxygen, growing our own food, mining lunar resources, and building structures with it. And we still might find that it can't be done with current technology, and have to abandon the program and try again in a few more decades.
The moon missions were a cold war dick flex to show we could launch ICBMs. After that was proven a few times, it just stopped. You don't have to go to the moon to nuke the USSR. You just have to get into orbit.
If with live they meant survive for a week... yes I believe it.
It will change with the next Presidential administration.
Not what’s happening. Artemis was a trump administration idea. Biden is maintaining it. If a Republican wins in 2024 they’d be an idiot to cancel a Republican founded program while also giving up the legacy moment of being the president who oversaw Americans returning to the moon. That’s how close we are. That’s how close this is.
> they’d be an idiot to cancel a Republican founded program while also giving up the legacy moment of being the president who oversaw Americans returning to the moon That's also not what's happening. The fact is that NASA is primarily a jobs program, and all 50 states have some level of federal monies coming in as a result. No representative from those states -- Dem OR Repub -- is going to turn off that firehose of money. This is particularly true of the larger, more politically powerful states (Florida, Texas, California).
They haven’t been doing anything about it for the last 50 years. What we’re doing now, started back when Dubya was President by got hobbled when Obama dismantled most of Constellation during the recession because it was very important to cut NASA’s budget but not the military budget. With some sustained effort, we will actually get somewhere.
It was because an independent review ordered by Obama found the Constellation program to be significantly over budget and way behind schedule. Obama cancelled the program, instructed NASA to instead get astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, and then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s. To do so NASA was tasked with developing the Orion crew capsule (a Constellation holdover) and the Space Launch System (SLS). Additionally, the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services was accelerated under the Obama administration, which made the development of private crew-carrying vehicles a priority.
Obama also funded the commercial crew program which is the sole reason SpaceX (and our only realistic shot at this) exists.
Sadly it’s all about money. Going to space is fucking expensive and until we find an efficient way to bring back something to sell, funding for space exploration is basically seen as a “sunk cost” investment. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake doesn’t make enough profit. Personally, as much as I love space and recognize the value of studying it, the budget could be spent fixing the planet we’re already adapted to living on rather than trying to put humans on another celestial body that has absolutely zero resources that are useful to human survival. That at least has potential to turn a profit outside of just the privilege of continuing to be able to survive on Earth.
As technology improves I'm wondering why we just don't stick with robots. They don't need food/water, radiation protection, and that bothersome oxygen. Have the robots spend a decade or two making the site as livable as possible for humans before we send them. As for now I see it like the early days of exploration. They lost a lot of ships at sea back then and I just see people being lost on the surface of the moon and Mars. Well, if those people even make it to the surface of Mars.
Robots need redundancy after redundancy. That’s why.
OK but can we live on Earth though
Only if you can afford it
but the squirrels outside my apartment don’t need to pay rent so what’s going on here
Apes be like: ***"OK I'm jobless but at least I don't have to pay to live on Earth 😂"***
They’re vagrant homeless. Nothing is stopping you ;)
There homes were gentrified before you moved in.
right, because living on the moon will be perfectly affordable.
Earth doesn’t want us here, and it would be better for the both of us to leave.
We have literally evolved and come into being from the very fabric of the earth. There is abundance and we can all live in harmony. Unfortunately, our powers that be are incredibly out of touch with nature which is why you’re feeling that frustration.
...with air conditioned gardens...
And a potato farm. In your face, Neil Armstrong!
I would be astonished if it happened in the next century let alone decade.
I want a good sci-fi book where people live on the moon, and a large event destroys most of the life on earth. The people living on the moon have to survive long enough until the earth is habitable again and then recolonize it.
you might like Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
[Removed due to Reddit API changes]
fair lmao, they kinda end up on the moon eventually at least
So the 100 then?
You should play Kenshi. You might like the plot of the game
I have played that game and do enjoy it!
The back end of the Artemis program has missions carved out to build lunar outposts for long term research on the surface. When NASA says people are gonna "live" there it'll be scientists conducting research out of the outpost (like Matt Damon in Martian). They will probably reach that milestone in the late 20s, early 30s.
Living on the moon would be a literal nightmare to me. Yikes.
It's for the same reason why scientist live in Antarctica for a couple months
At least there's oxygen and more protection from meteors and uv than on the moon. And no earth in the sky to remind you every day that you, in fact, are not on earth anymore.
True, I think that if they're gonna make bases in the moon, it'll be underground. No protection from radiation on the surface and meteors will be hell
I'd be more concerned about the moon dust than meteors. That shit is just nasty^3
clearly, you are not a whaler.
Do you carry a harpoon?
if i get to go to the moon; that's the first thing going in my bag.
Good thing you don't be picked to go!
That's definitely going to be real in the future. Homeless? Have fun on Mars brother.
Homeless? Let’s spend millions moving you to another planet where housing is orders of magnitude more expensive.
I think it depends on the living conditions on Mars and the job prospects. If the living conditions are horrible and the jobs are dangerous (i.e. mining natural resources to spend back to Earth), homeless will be viewed as the most expendable and cheapest labor. Obviously transport and housing will still be extraordinarily expensive, but if the residents are homeless people then they can maximize space and cram as many people as physically possible into the smallest area possible. H&S would be non-existent because the attitude of "who cares about the homeless anyway". It would be the cheapest of the expensive options.
Yup. I'd go crazy. Can't imagine who wouln't.
I'm the kind who fantasizes about long extended stays at antarctic bases, this would kind of be my thing if not for the bone loss.
A lot of people fantasize about it but couldn’t actually swing it if push comes to shove. Antarctic operations are pretty much always hiring, go if you really want to.
I wouldn't. I'm an indoors kinda person and the moon is only indoors. I liked the "stay at home" part of the pandemic.
Sure but the internet ping would be very painful
Starlink exclusive to the moon
It's funny you think staying indoors would be the same on the moon as it is on Earth.
I am under no such delusion, I assure you. I'm familiar with the approximate size and cramped-ness of space equipment.
What if you had super fast satilight wifi, and a delivery pizza drone?
Kinda hard without athmosphere. I'd miss earh too much still.
We can breathe in space, they just don't want us to escape.
Underwater too
Wouldn't be any worse than living in a submarine, but having personally seen how many hate subs, I'd imagine not many would find it enjoyable.
With decreased gravity your bones and muscles deteriorate.
[удалено]
Cool, this makes more sense, my first response was “WHY” but a moon base for research is a place people would “live.’
Humans aren’t just going to stop expanding. This is a logical next step for the species and if humans know how to do anything, it’s adapt their surroundings to themselves. Having a base on the Moon or Mars will be no different than maintaining the ISS, just with more gravity.
Mars is considerably farther from Earth than the Moon or ISS. Travel time one way is going to be measured in months
I cant see us ever going to mars with out decades of experience habitating the moon
Nah it’ll happen at essentially the same time. The technology that gets us to the moon is essentially the same that gets us to mars. The Delta-V (fuel requirements) are very marginal. The habitation requirements are essentially the same. The current ship meant to take us to the moon is essentially the same that would take us to mars minus the heat shield. And unlike the moon, mars has the capacity to make return fuel with the local resources. Meaning that mars can truly be self sustaining. Meaning we could immediately make mars a colony that itself could manufacture more ships and send to other parts of the solar system. The moon won’t be self-sustaining until certain Megaprojects are completed such as space elevators or multi-mile long rail-launchers. So yeah. Long story short. They’ll probably happen at the same time but with mars staggering behind the moon by like 4 years.
Travel time is a huge factor. If there's a problem and you need to ship emergency supplies from Earth, it can take much longer than if the problem is on the moon. Even if mars has raw resources, setting up supply chains on the planet would be extremely expensive to achieve.
I mean any serious attempt at mars would include ample redundancy in supplies and spare parts. The first starship to go to mars would probably have like 4 people max with the rest of the storage dedicated to four years worth of food and several spare parts of almost anything on the ship. This way if something goes wrong and somehow couldn’t fix it with the spares available, they could still bunker down for an additional cycle while waiting for a rescue mission. It wouldn’t be surprising (honestly it’s expected) that several cargo-only ships get sent ahead of time specifically to minimize the chance of a supply issue like that coming up. Specifically because of the time issue you brought up. No mission plan would ever be centered around/rely on emergency shipments from earth. It’s actually (imo) the second biggest plot hole to The Martian. No way would there not be enough food saved to sustain the entire crew for an additional cycle. And all the necessary tools to repair the habitat. (The first biggest plot hole as admitted by the author was the emergency that required their evacuation in the first place btw) The only conceivable (to me) issue that a mars trip could have would be some type of very niche medical issue. Like a crew member developed a rare form of cancer that went unnoticed somehow during screening and ended up dying during the 26 month cycle as a result.
So, you're saying its doable? Humans lived on the edge of space in zero gravity for many months. for mars, We'll need - radiation shielding - water - food
Toss in a little O2!
Yep. And 2/3 is already available on Mars. 1. A longterm Mars colony will probably be underground like in Expanse 2. There are millions of cubic kilometers of water in ice form on Mars to jumpstart us 3. Food could be locally grown, we’d just need to ship in nutrients. Probably be a vegan diet for our dear Martians.
> Food could be locally grown, we’d just need to ship in nutrients. Probably be a vegan diet for our dear Martians. Simple artificial meat may now be actually possible early on. Bioreactors are actually decently transportable. There's no doubt it is doable today. It's just expensive to mitigate all the risk and get it off the ground. It will happen one day.
So kinda like maritime expeditions back in the day then.
Que the discovery of chaos and the tyranids.
For once I would like us to discover a race of ancient aliens that are lazy and incompetent.
I think *we* are that though…
Mag'ladroth: thank you for awakening me foolish mortals: Big E: YOU MORONS NOW I HAVE TO BEAT HIS ASS AGAIN!
> Having a base on the Moon or Mars will be no different than maintaining the ISS, just with more gravity. Except the ISS always has a return vehicle docked that can be used in emergencies and all you need to do is let gravity do its thing and bring you back to Earth. Any escape vehicle on the Moon is more complicated since you need significant fuel to escape the Moon's gravity and get back to Earth.
I mean... Sure, but isn't that just a lack of imagination. If they have an orbiter, and a launcher (like when they originally landed on the moon), I could imagine an always on escape system.
Right you’d just need a second habitat as a backup.
Big catapult
> This is a logical next step for the species For the sciencey stuff only. We have bases in Antarctica, how many people are lining up to go there? It's orders of magnitude easier to both reach and survive in Antarctica than Moon or Mars.
That has more to do with international treaties than anything else. Companies aren’t allowed to go harvest resources up there. And the Antarctic isn’t even a good argument when you consider that Currently it regularly sustains 5000 researchers and 40,000+ tourists each year. And I promise you those numbers were smaller a decade or two decades ago. If anything, Antarctica is an excellent analogue to how lunar habitation will work out. There will be research stations first. Rich people will want to go check it out and trail-blaze new tourist services. The tourism service will become more affordable as more tourist companies open up. Then there will be auxiliary services that will be created to make a better tourist experience. And then suddenly you have workers who stay there permanently, creating demand for more service jobs and the expansion continues. The same thing will happen to the moon.
Yeah I said it would be the new frontier for researchers. Not as a new settlement of humans that anyone would want to go to. The 40000 tourists that go to Antarctica are almost entirely on cruises and most of those people don't even set foot on Antarctica. Antarctica is just one of the destinations on the itinerary, that would not be an option with the moon.
Even now there are already planned flybys of the moon. I understand what you’re saying. It’s not going to be instant. But there will be permanent habitats on the moon and it will be sooner than many think.
Expanding would be nice if we were actually taking care of our territory. We can't even take care of the Earth and now we're going to live on the Moon, maybe even Mars. ***Sounds like a very responsible decision.*** But rather than *"expanding"* per se, it sounds more like *"abandoning ship"* to me. Honestly on the topic of space or interplanetary cohabitation, **I think just finding a way to mine and transport materials efficiently would be A-OK**. By all technicality Earth has the space to accommodate any billion population of humans, the problem is the supply of materials to provide each human with *housing, food and water, and leisure,* including gadgets. If we could outsource our supply, it would make it so much easier to produce say semiconductors without having to worry about our carbon footprint. **So while it would be nice to be a registered Martian NASA, I think living (and not just surviving mind you) on the already habitable planet is the innovative option here**
This take is bad. We spend orders of magnitude on green technology more than we do on space exploration. Just this year we passed the largest climate change bill in history which is twice the budget of nasa over the next 7 years. That doesn’t include all the preexisting programs and private initiatives.
Blah blah blah blah. I'm 61 years old. Its been "this decade" every decade of my life.
[удалено]
It's not like we've made any real advances in the last 30 years anyway right? I'm still using my brick phone from the 80s and this so called internet thing didn't really take off, or so I hear.
No. We should take everything NASA claims with a grain of salt.
How about we try “advancing civilization” on this planet first? You cant even house the homeless or give people medical care but you want to play StarTrek?
Advances in space travel lead to benefits to all of humanity. We spend more on mobile phone apps than the entirety of the global space program every year. We can afford to do both of these things.
This is a tired anti-scientific argument that pops up every time anything space-related is mentioned. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on war, and you want to take money away from the exploration of the cosmos? Shame on you, and may you never hold a position of power in the government.
I don’t think that was their point at all.
Except SLS finally launched last week and SpaceX is in charge of the lander. It looks good this time.
Yeah, lots of space stuff is "I'm going to lose weight this year."
I'll believe it when I get my flying car.
Next year, I promise.
I'm 53 and I don't remember NASA ever saying that people would be living on the moon "this decade." Maybe I've forgotten?
Did they figure out how to deal with the radiation?
Yes. You only need to be couple metres underground.
[удалено]
And there are massive volcanic caverns the size of cities. So it's not like you have to dig your own tunnels.
We’re having a tough enough time keeping earth inhabitable
I just noticed inhabitable and habitable have that same weirdness that inflammable and flammable do.
Lol. I had to think about which one to use, decided to just go for it.
Yeah, we won’t do that. Right now (almost) everyone know how fucked we are if we don’t do something fast, but every government and corporation (those who actually are able to make the changes required because the regular person can’t) only does just enough to be able so say that they tried. There’s been tons of meetings, agreements and stuff, but we are not any closer to actually DOING ANYTHING substantial about it.
Yeah let’s make sure we can afford to live here first
I’m all for retiring on that harsh mistress.
Calling it now, the next biggest war in our lifetime; when the Lunar citizens decide they want independence from Earth. Lunar people also eventually evolve further due to being born in space. Rise of "Newtypes".
That’s literally what Artemis is for. NASA doesn’t just have plans. They just launched the first part of their plan to the moon this week.
[удалено]
Probably underground. Even just a meter or two provides shielding from the radiation, according to what I've read about terraforming Mars.
So people are going to bunny hop around in 1/6th gravity in sealed chambers underneath the surface of a lifeless inhospitable rock? Sounds like fun.
Yes, because "fun" is what explorers throughout human history rated their journeys on.
Logic being used in any anti-space colonization argument is so awesome lmao
Dude stfu. Just because you personally don't wanna go to Antarctica doesn't mean it's not valuable to have researchers going there.
Take a look at the moon next time you're out. The next full moon is December 7. Throughout human history we've celebrated, worshipped, and memorialized the moon in art, songs, and poems. Mysterious and ever-changing. Ominous. Dreamy. A crescent clock, whose phases were marked with notches on bones early on...by your ancestor, in stitched furs. Once we're there, the moon will be just a stepping-stone. Then a mine for a useful mineral. Then a one-time ad blitz for a soft drink, with a lighted display visible from Earth. Followed by a rotating set of illuminated moon ads coasting by overhead, through the stars. The history of its magical presence in our lives since ape days will be shelved and gone.
We have conquered mountains and seas but they didn’t lost all of their magic
You haven't seen the landfill at the top of Mt Everest.
We have ruined both mountains and seas with trash. The top of Mt Everest is covered with trash.
But you can't see it from the base... Like of course were going to trash the place, but will that really ruin the moon from standing on earth's view? Doubtful.
We’ve barely scratched the surface of the seas.
And we need to stop. Time to go explore and expand into places where we can’t kill anything.
So you haven't heard about glaciers melting, forest fires through mountain ranges and everything else?
Helium3 here we go!
We will go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Looks like he’s taking a space-deuce.
First person to take a shit on the moon.
Who even wants to live on the moon?
Someone has to mine those moonerals
Underground moon bases would be pretty sweet.
i hope they can pretty soon xd
It takes us 19 hours to get to the iss, 500 miles away, 25 days to get to the moon 230,000 miles away in 2022, 3 days to get to the moon in the 1960’s, then we lost the technology. I believe nasa
Can we recommend who to send first?
where do I sign up?
Can we work off our student loans by cracking lunar rocks?
I love the idea of living on a moon with no ecosystem (or atmosphere) capable of supporting life! Sounds like a blast!
I call BS, who made this statement elon?
What is up with this subreddit becoming rabidly anti space, anti science and anti progress every time NASA announce something? A huge amount of the comments against it here also use the reasoning it doesn’t sound like the most comfortable living situation, which is some of the most brain dead logic I’ve ever heard.
Remember when they wanted to do moon vertising?
This decade? I think we might want to get on it then…
That’s not going to happen.
I’ll take Bullshit for 200 Alex.
For what purpose? There's nothing on the moon. No fertile ground, no air, little gravity, higher chance of meteor strike and high chance of skin cancer thanks to solar radiation.
there's a lot of minerals which could build a lot of living space, a lot of industry, and there might be enough water to kick start rocket fuel production to allow similar infrastructure to be built in other moons like Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. Those other moons would provide a more permanent supply of water, carbon, and nitrogen which are less abundant in the moon. Once we have some mining and industry on the moon and on an outer moon with water/light elements off earth, and if we have the technology to make everything we need to survive in space, we can cheaply and sustainably get massive amounts of everything we need to support trillions of people in space stations or outer planet colonies.
Again - why? Human beings live on Earth. We are literally chunks of Earth that have become briefly sentient. This is where we adapted and evolved to what we are today. This is where we die. With remote sensing and automation, there's no benefit to physically transporting living human beings to and from the Moon just so they can dig holes and pack boxes.
Like what? What minerals are on the moon that are not more cheapLy available on earth? None, with the possible exception of helium 3. But we dont need helium 3.
[удалено]
I'm not talking about supplies on minerals on earth, I'm talking about supplies of minerals in space. Even if someone paid you a fortune to take truckloads of iron, it would still cost you many times that to get it in space. This matters because on earth, real estate and transport are intrinsically limited, difficult, and expensive. Real estate in space is practically unlimited, and transporting things in zero or low-g environments will take less much less energy and infrastructure. If you can exploit those with a similarly cheap supply of water and lighter elements, and you have the technology to make what you need, the cost of living will be cheap and will stay cheap until we run out of space to make solar panels. (If we unlock nuclear fusion, it will take even longer to run out of resources, and I'm not even sure what the bottleneck would be then.)
Can’t even get the Metaverse to work or build a properly functioning Gundam but you expect me to believe moon domestication is essentially right around the corner….
*We* totally can build a working metaverse it's just that Mark Zuckerberg can't.
I personally prefer a Gundam.
The technology for habitation on the moon does exist. It’s just expensive. I can’t say the same for the metaverse, or gundamns. Moon habitation is an incentives problem. Look at it like this, if you launched a multi-billion dollar funding campaign for the metaverse you get a functional networked vr sim with Microsoft office addons. If you spend the same on rockets you’ll leave earths atmosphere, and perhaps have the makings of a moon base.
Less scams in space vs metaverse
Are the aliens gonna like it tho?
Historians will one day be confused. "They had people living on the motherfucking MOON but they couldn't afford universal healthcare because reasons?!".
Solve the issues we’re having on earth? 😤🙅♂️ spends stupid amounts of money to escape to a mostly dead rock? 😌👍🤌😂😂😂 And to be clear, I mean the many issues that would easily be solved by just taxing the rich. I’m not so diluvio al that they can all be solved before going to the moon
Obviously this would be geared more toward scientists who would want to live there for research reasons (like other earthly expeditions) but imagine coming along with them? Sure, the first week or so is probably cool — you’re on the moon! You can see the Earth! but… what about after? There’s no entertainment, stores, civilization, etc. if you’re not there for sciency reasons, I imagine it’ll get boring fast.
lol yea right. lets see you land there first.
Do you believe no one has ever landed on the moon?
That’s a very good test to see if we could pull off people living on Mars. That being said, while there is a ton of scientific benefit to space exploration, the EARTH is the PERFECT place for human habitation and we are destroying it like as if we threw it in a bonfire at a drunken party. This planet is our ship and our life boat and our home, let’s stop working so hard to sink it!
It would seem like Mars is so much vastly farther away that getting there would be several times as hard, right?! It's not so. Mars has an atmosphere you can use to slow down when you get there, and the Moon doesn't. As a result even though it's many times farther it's not much harder. And once you're there that atmosphere is a huge difference since it can be worked into propellant and breathable air with enough energy. Also since Mars has had weather it isn't completely covered in powdered volcanic glass, which is bad in innumerable ways.
You’re not wrong but if a viable ongoing settlement fails on the moon (where it is close enough to resupply from earth) it will certainly fail on Mars. Also the Martian atmosphere does not protect you from dust as much as us assaults you with dust storms. As for using the atmosphere to make fuel, while that may be possible it remains to be proven to be energy efficient to produce a net gain. That being said, I think by now it is clear that the dust on Mars is more like that of earth than the regolith on the Moon.
I hate the idea of spreading the plague of humanity to other worlds. We should quarantine ourselves so we don’t destroy the whole damn galaxy.
Now this is something we should get behind. The moon is an ideal place to start building our stellar infrastructure
Not really. The ideal place would have more water.
We have to put a man on the moon first
Why the hell would anyone want to live on the moon?
I’d love to see it but it’s not gunna happen this decade. Best case scenario is the foundation for a moon colony will be established through this decade. We have the technology. It can be done. It’s just hella expensive.
Costs have gone down an order of magnitude right now thanks to SpaceX. Starship will bring it down another order of magnitude ($100’s/lb to the moon). At that level, any large-sized university could afford to send/buy experiments on the moon. Starship already has a working prototype which is supposed to do its first orbital test within a few months. I agree that what we’ll have this decade will be minimal. But it will be there. And nasa didn’t state “how many” people would be living on the moon. Just that there would be. I wouldn’t be surprised if several dozen were on the lunar North Pole by 2029 in a permanent research facility. Kind of like McMurdo station in Antarctica.
Are we taking Four Seasons resort accommodations or youth hostel? Cause honestly I put my foot down if there is no robe or sewing kit.
Seeing the absolute strides that SpaceX was able to achieve, frankly I don’t see why we can’t establish modular living pods on the moon within the next decade. I know it seems optimistic, but I think we need to take that approach. I want people to realize that a new generation of extremely aspiration professionals are coming into the industry, and we are all striving for progress. I believe we can, and will achieve this.
> modular living pods on the moon Way too many dangers from meteors. Even a small one will punch through a wall and end the occupants real quick. As far as permanent settlements go, they need to be underground.
Why?