Not a fan of this because of the reasons they are doing it. Sure, it's cool to visit the moon, and I like that and find it interesting, but they are hoping to one day colonize the moon/Mars for humans to live on. Why? (and this is the reason why I'm not thrilled about this)... because some people (Elon comes to mind, and there are others IMO) who think that we'll need to live there as Earth will become uninhabitable.
(too many) People (IMO) are really messing up this planet. Climate change, which is spawning off other issues I won't go in to here as it's off topic, but in a nutshell they are going back to the moon to learn how we can live off it and eventually colonize it and/or Mars.
sbm
i'd say the reason for these missions is a lot of people want to do them, for
various reasons, and only some of those people are thinking about space colonization. it's sort of a political coalition of scientists, people who like exploring, people who want to see us planting flags as a matter of national pride, a few national security types, and people who just think it's cool. ...
with the people like musk who believe we should colonize space.
of the ones who think we should colonize space, there's an important distinction to make:
1) wanting to "escape" earth, because we're messing it up with climate change, etc.
2) wanting to have colonies in space so our species won't go extinct if we have a nuclear war or earth gets hit by an asteroid.
those are two different things, but i see #2 getting twisted into #1 in conversations about space colonization. i don't know of
anyone whose views fit #1. i think it's a straw man. no amount of environmental damage or social unrest or whatever will make earth worse than living anywhere in space. living in space is unbelievably dangerous and difficult and miserable. and the people who spend a lot of time thinking about space colonization are well aware of that. hell, even after a nuclear war or asteroid impact, the earth would still be a better place to live than anywhere else -- but you would need some surviving humans to come back and live on it.
I've been hearing them discuss that the past 2 nights in a row on Bloomberg TV (financial news) so this thread interested me when I saw it created.
Below is a short video clip from Bloomberg talking about exactly that. I have a quote below that started about 1 min in. There was more after this. I didn't quote the entire clip.
"There's a lot that NASA hopes to gain from the moon. There's this idea of jumpstarting a lunar economy. So finding ways to make money off the moon. Possibly for an economy around the moon. And then, of course, it's learning how to live off another planetary body. That's no small feat. And eventually the goal is to get to Mars. And so learning to live off the surface of the moon, those lessons can then be applied to Mars living some day."
it is NASA's stated goal to return people to the moon and then (using knowledge and technology gained in the process), send people to live on mars. that goal is sort of the overall will of the political coalition i mentioned. it's vague, but to the extent they've planned this, they're talking about small scientific outposts. if you're thinking NASA is saying we need to get ready to move large numbers of people to escape earth, i think you're reading something into it that isn't there.
what their plans basically call for, and what is most likely to actually happen for the foreseeable future, is for the moon and mars to become the next antarctica. a few bases with a small number of people, mostly scientists and explorers, and only very gradually will the numbers of people increase or will they become more self-sufficient. there won't be communities of people just choosing to live their whole lives there, like someone might do in france or ohio. not for a very long time, if ever.
www.popsci.com
