I think it's pretty much politically impossible. The first big space push was mostly a political pissing match (i.e. not really driven by doing it for its own sake). It's pretty easy to come up with other major challenges that most people will consider more important that also aren't getting funding ... so private industry looks more likely to get some traction. States might get interested if/when those efforts start to get more interesting or threatening.
Mars in your lifetime is implausible, but not impossible I suppose.
> The first big space push was mostly a political pissing match (i.e. not really driven by doing it for its own sake).
My understanding is that the Defense Department was interested in human manned spy satellites liked the planned Manned Orbital Laboratory early on, but that automation progressed to the point where it was preferable.
I think that's one thing people miss when they talk about lack of progress in space. We use space, a lot. The thing is, in terms of things we actually want to do, automated vessels work a lot better than manned ones. People who are focused on manned space missions aren't focused on space, they're advocates for one particular tech stack that's extremely inefficient at doing the things we currently want to do in space.
There's still a lot of defense reasons to go to the moon. You can put much larger telescopes there, though you're back to windows of time you can look at a location but you can have good will and dedicate time to scientists. Though they might not want to reveal the resolution even though this can be roughly back tracked through size. There's also the weapons incentive even though that's illegal. But if you're able to cheaply and consistently put people on the moon then you clearly have the resources to cheaply put large rods of tungsten in orbit (good luck responding to), being able to take out enemy satellites (nav, surveillance, missile launch detection, etc), replace/upgrade satellites quickly, etc. The Apollo missions were always about how much payload you could put in orbit.
It's also beneficial if you want to start space mining, really essential for that actually.
Putting a spy telescope on Moon seems like a bad idea.
- Moon moves across the sky very slowly (relative to stars) which means that your spy satellite would have about 30 days to cover full earth, and would be able to see only a part of Earth at any given moment (theoretically half, but lot of it would be from very bad angles)
- Moon is in an ecliptic? orbit, so spying on anything close to the poles will be from an angle - this might not be bad in all cases but the lack of flexibility is a big thing
- Putting any mass on the Moon requires much more delta V than putting something in orbit. If you can put a big telescope on Moon, you can put several in Earth orbit or put one much bigger one.
Having capability to stage on the Moon would be interesting, especially if fuel can be made on the moon. It would be easier on human bodies and you have access to lot of resources. If you can find water and decent metals, that's a pretty good spot to fuel your rockets.
The moon moves slowly but the Earth rotates quickly. Most of the earth surface can be seen during one day. The earth is not illuminated by sunlight all the time, about half of the lunar month would be completely dark.
Moon is in an inclined orbit, which is slightly elliptic. I assume this is what you meant by "ecliptic" (which refers to the orbital plane of the Earth around the Sun). The orbital inclination has the most significant implications to Earth surface visibility, but the Moon is far enough that almost half of Earth surface is visible at all times.
For Earth observation, satellites are better positioned than a lunar surface observatory.
The moon isn't a great place for an outpost or staging point for exploration. Launches and descents are expensive and spoil all the savings. Maybe if LH2/LOX could be manufactured on the moon very cheaply (from water ice), it could make sense to do refueling for exploration vehicles parked on a halo orbit near Lagrange points.
But orbital refueling of cryogenic propellants (especially hydrogen) or manufacturing them on the moon aren't viable in the near future.
There aren't a lot of good economic or exploration incentives to go to the moon, unfortunately. It only has scientific and prestige value. The long lunar night (14 earth days) makes it a poor location for a permanent outpost.
All of that said, I'm all for going to the moon with humans on board.
You are right about Earth rotating. I spaced out on that one.
About the ecliptic, I was trying to say that any observatory on the moon would have issues observing polar regions because the Earth surface in polar regions would be at a low angle. I know some spy sats "look ahead" to get better detail resolution but they have ability to look from different angles as well. Moon would be a bad spot for that.
Rest of it I mostly agree. One thing up to debate is whether an outpost on the moon would be useful. If you can manufacture fuel on the Moon, it would be very useful. Another aspect is human health in zero G. Moon with low gravity may be enough to help with long term human stay.
The lunar orbit is inclined so that the moon moves between about +/- 28 degrees north/south latitude with reference to the Earth equatorial plane.
That's Earth's axial tilt of ~23 deg + the inclination of the lunar orbit w.r.t. the ecliptic of ~5 deg.
This means that when the moon is at its northest (above southern Florida), it has a pretty good view over the north pole (but it's at quite an oblique angle of ~60 deg), and the south pole is not visible. About 14 days later it's the opposite.
But yeah, I agree with the conclusion that the Moon is not a good place for a Earth observation for a lot of reasons.
>being able to take out enemy satellites (nav, surveillance, missile launch detection, etc)
You can easily do it without having objects in orbit. You can simply launch a ballistic cloud of debris at suborbital speeds and kinetic energy of the targeted satellite will do the rest. Time to hit could be shorter for an orbital system, but not significantly so. This is why I consider the recent news about the Russian orbital satellite killer to be a cheap fearmongering.
There have been studies and the rods from the gods concept doesn’t work. Atmospheric braking would slow them to their terminal velocity before impact. You might as well throw them out of a plane. There are also all kinds of problems with time to target, terminal guidance and cross range capability.
All of what you said can better be done by machines and many such things are done by machines.
The milestones that get people existed are when men reach places hitherto unreached, but there is no practical purpose to risking the life of a man who needs far more complicated facilities to survive, other than bragging rights.
The I.S.S. was largely a political and not a scientific endeavor, and it's a shame it consumed so many resources, that could have gone to more serious scientific efforts.
The cost of the I.S.S. could have easily given mankind nuclear fusion, — the ability to power entire countries with a couple of litres of seawater. It's strange where priorities lie.
There's no proof of this because viable nuclear fusion has not yet been achieved. Humanity may never achieve this for all we know (though I sincerely hope we do).
The same can be said about any research whereto resources are allocated.
Making a reasonable estimate when both started, nuclear fusion seems to be a smarter investment, for if it finally be there, the benefits are incalculable.
We have nuclear fusion, both from the sun and here on Earth (ITER, NIF, H-bombs). The main problems with human-started nuclear fusion are that (so far, iirc) it consumes more energy than it produces, and we cannot sustain it for a long time.
"The benefits" are currently very calculable, and direct economics of nuclear fusion is very negative. (The research benefit is unique though.)
For nuclear fusion to be of incalculable benefit to mankind, we need insanely small nuclear fusion that is energy-positive and sustainable in a simple way. "Insanely small" means smaller than Moon-sized, when we know that Jupiter-sized is too small/light in nature.
Sustained nuclear fusion for energy generation still faces daunting challenges.
10 years ago the consensus--scientists, engineers, etc--was that self-driving cars would be ubiquitous or on the cusp of ubiquity today. That same common but woefully mistaken wisdom is also behind the preference for remote space exploration and exploitation.
We clearly have issues with underestimating the complexity of these engineering problems and overestimating the pace of technological progress. I'd also argue, albeit more contentiously, that we systematically underestimate the utility of a physical human presence at exploration sites, and the cognitive dissonance of our biases cause us to scale back our ambitions so we don't have to admit to the limitations of the remote-controlled approach.
Exclusively committing to remote-controlled exploration also avoids the thorny issues around deliberately putting explorers into harms way or even actual harm. I think Musk understands, knowingly or at least intuitively, that the debate is basically impossible to have; our culture isn't equipped for it. Necessity will drive us toward human space exploration. Safety will be to some extent needlessly neglected, and then there'll be vigorous finger pointing and "I told you so"s after the fact--after the sacrifices have been made and after the benefits have been secured for all. Basically the same pattern will play out as with any other area where prohibition or abstention is the official choice despite its patent unviability.
Engineering difficulty is often put forward as a limiting factor. But actually I think history suggests that with enough resources we can accomplish things. And in fact it is possible for a project to have astonishingly brilliant engineering and still be disappointing in terms of wider impact (see the space shuttle).
The limiting factor is much more mundane. Getting humans to collaborate selflessly on complex projects is difficult. Effective communication in large groups is a massive unsolved problem. That is what holds us back, not engineering complexity. Perhaps the true genius of SpaceX is using Mars to bring people together. Something the bean counters at Boeing never thought of!
> 10 years ago the consensus--scientists, engineers, etc-
This is only true if you were sampling the people trying to build them (which is mostly what the popular press did). Really there wasn't anything like consensus, but there was a lot of optimism.
Really hope China ditches the Outer Space Treaty and claims sovereign territory on the moon. Only then will the space race ignite again. It seems only competition makes the human spirit move.
I suspect any player powerful enough to have the means to claim territory on the moon, will ditch the outer space treaty eventually.
Unless it is a purely scientific mission, but that is un likely at the moment.
I think it's pretty much politically impossible. The first big space push was mostly a political pissing match (i.e. not really driven by doing it for its own sake). It's pretty easy to come up with other major challenges that most people will consider more important that also aren't getting funding ... so private industry looks more likely to get some traction. States might get interested if/when those efforts start to get more interesting or threatening.
Mars in your lifetime is implausible, but not impossible I suppose.