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Realistically, what do people plan to do on the Moon and Mars that requires a permanent, or long term human presence there? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago by DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

353 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn't we do those things directly, without going there?

It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.

I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that's why we poors support it, but that doesn't "pay the bills." What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?

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[–] edgesmash@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Mining the moon to send materials to Earth would not be economical in the slightest because the Moon has nothing Earth doesn't. Sure, space launches from the Moon would be way easier and cheaper than from Earth (once you make the massive investment of time and money to build the space launch facilities on the Moon). But if you're talking about shipping materials to Earth from the Moon, either you need to send your freighters back from Earth to the Moon (expensive), or you make the freighters on the Moon and disassemble them on Earth, counting them as part of the haul. All that for iron, silicon, aluminum, magnesium, and titanium, stuff we can get on Earth easily enough.

The only possible economic argument for Moon mining is for a self-sustaining lunar settlement able to source space launch materials locally instead of getting them from an expensive rocket from Earth. That way, you can use the Moon as a jumping-off point to the rest of the solar system and beyond. That's a great idea for space exploration in the long term for sure. But it's a very long term plan and won't be economically feasible for a century at least.

One could make the argument that mining Earth is contributing to planetary pollution and generally fucking up our ecosystem. That's true for sure. I'm pretty sure implementing clean mining practices would be more economical than the cost of lunar mining (and that's not even accounting for the pollution caused by the freighters' reentry).