Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: You Missed The Point Entirely

The reason for returning to the Moon is early impactor detection
E.P. Grondine — (archived)

Hello Gbaikie -

The reason for returning to the Moon is not to look for water there.

It is to build astronomical facilities capable of reliably finding small Earth bound impactors with sufficient warning to prevent massive loss of life - say around 70,000,000 people; think WW II.

Now it may just so happen that the facilites used for this could be used to tackle "other goals" later... goals such as looking for water, and then using it...

The question is do you use hypergolics, peroxide/alcohol, or H/O cryogenics for the fuel system. Hypergolics have to be delivered from Earth; peroxide and alcohol have longer and easier storage than H/O, but handling peroxide in a dirty dusty environment like the Moon would seem to me to very difficult, if not simply impossible... but then technologies change, and may have already...; lastly there's maybe O/alcohol... And then of course specific impulses have ot be worked in...

Bottom line, the expected effect from the success of a space project has to exceed its anticipated costs, or it simply does not get done.

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