Seriously. Humanity needs to establish a colony on the far closer moon before tackling the far more problematic in the short term but higher potential in the long term Mars. We need to have proven long term habitation buildings, hydroponic food farms, labratories in low gravity, EVERYTHING in low gravity working before tackling Mars.
VISITING Mars, absolutely we should do it and soon but Musk et al. are foolishly optimistic and begging for a failure if they try to establish a colony so far away from resupply and/or rescue first.
Elon not long ago said they are shifting to focus on the moon first since it's closer and easier and then focus on Mars. Apparently very recently he's talking about manufacturing solar panels on the moon and mining the silicon on the moon to do so.
If we can manufacture space ships on the moon from lunar material that's a total game changer for accessing the rest of the solar system because virtually all the energy we currently use to go to space is just for getting out of Earth's atmosphere and gravity well.
I wrote a long napkin math post about Earth-Mars versus Earth-moon-Mars transfer costs and then I realised yeah you probably could just huck shit from the moon (like with a damn trebuchet now that I think of it) into an Earth parking orbit pretty cheaply.
Or even better, on an intercept with wherever you're going so you've got some Ikea assembly to do on the way.
I dunno about manufacturing the lightest fucking part of a vehicle there and expecting it to work better than calculator solar cells, but just making structural tubes and toilets out of moon-crete probably would be economical. Stuff you don't mind not being made out of space-age iso-laminate-whatever if it saves you a few percent overall and ends up adding leg room.
I wrote a long napkin math post about Earth-Mars versus Earth-moon-Mars transfer costs and then I realised yeah you probably could just huck shit from the moon (like with a damn trebuchet now that I think of it) into an Earth parking orbit pretty cheaply.
Or even better, on an intercept with wherever you're going so you've got some Ikea assembly to do on the way.
I dunno about manufacturing the lightest fucking part of a vehicle there and expecting it to work better than calculator solar cells, but just making structural tubes and toilets out of moon-crete probably would be economical. Stuff you don't mind not being made out of space-age iso-laminate-whatever if it saves you a few percent overall and ends up adding leg room.
There's aluminum on the moon. And silicon refineries need a vacuum and environments with no contaminants. Maybe some of that stuff would be easier on the moon? I've read some sci fi and old NASA documents about using the moon as a pit stop. Your post too. Find more ice and you can make hydrogen to gas up a larger rocket that takes less fuel to break from the 1/6th gravity on the moons.
I'm sorry to ask such a dumb question, but yes i Saw in reddit a thread asking why we should colonize Mars or what brings to the table colonizing mars and everyone on reddit was saying "there is no necessity is all dumb if you can colonize Mars you can fix earth and never leave it" and i feel that is true in some part but is the reddit nihilism that all those redditors say it that kinda bothers me off, so in general i'm asking the kiwis if all of you have a response on why we need to colonize mars?
Main practical reason is that mars has lower gravity and is closer to the asteroid belt. We know of multiple asteroids that contain more gold, iron, nickel and whatever else you might think of than there is on earth.
No matter if we go the space colonization route or the mega structure route we need that shit sooner or later.
Elon not long ago said they are shifting to focus on the moon first since it's closer and easier and then focus on Mars. Apparently very recently he's talking about manufacturing solar panels on the moon and mining the silicon on the moon to do so.
We need 2 big things done before mining the moon and building proper interplanetary ships become a reality. If it's going to be done properly we need infrastructure that will survive longer than some unhinged billionaires' dream. (1) We need a skyhook or "space elevator" built somewhere on the equator which is just a big ol cable attached to a counterweight in space to slowly brrrrrr up big heavy loads that rockets can't handle. Once all the heavy shit is there we need (2) something solid at the L1 lagrange point between the moon and earth to start building things on, like a captured asteroid where the gravity between earth and the moon are null. Taking equipment and resources back and forth between the earth and moon is retarded and these baby steps need to be taken first
If all the world's governments got together and quit fighting so many wars, we could have those two main parts built within a decade. But that creates two new problems if we do it right now: the elevator cable would probably last just long enough to put an Indian Spawn Point up there before snapping from all the shitty Chinesium building materials
This is what it's intended to do. SpaceX still hasn't solved the fuel transfer problem, although they are said to be close to in-flight testing of their design.
