Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to ***As moderator, I have to ask you two a question***

Why the heck would you want to dive down a gravity well in the first place?
Tom Brosz — (archived)

Some points:

- If you can get the makings of a major science base to Mars, you can get a lot of equipment to the asteroids.

- Asteroids have a lot more easily-accessible resources than any of the planets, energy and free space available, and the product doesn't have to be fired out of a gravity well when you're done.

- NASA is not going to be the driving force behind space exploitation. Exploration? Sure. But arguing over where NASA should put its colonizing money is like arguing a hundred and fifty years ago over which breed of horse was going to pull the carriages of the 20th century.

- It's going to be a long time before the Moon becomes a net profit center. Even longer for Mars, if ever. Tourism on the Moon has possibilities. Mining Helium 3 does not. There may be esoteric industrial processes that would work better on the Moon than on Earth, but I haven't seen any. The vacuum in Earth industrial processing is a lot harder and cleaner than the vacuum on the Moon.

Short version: NASA will go to the Moon and Mars because it's cool, and we can learn things. When someone figures out a way to make money at it--and it's likely eventually they will--everybody else will go.

And this argument is mostly pointless.

We are, with luck, about five to ten years from a pretty decent privately-owned 10,000 - 20,000 lbs. to LEO launch capacity. You can do a hell of a lot with that if it's cheap enough, especially if you can do LEO assembly.

All this, of course, has the usual caveat that the real advances in this world tend to surprise everyone, including me.

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