Mars Needs Moon Bases
Practice Makes Perfect
So, the new NASA plan, according to our president, is head for Mars and not necessarily stop at the Moon first. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I don’t have a problem with cancelling the Constellation program, and I certainly LOVE that NASA will get a bunch more money. It only gets just around one HALF of one percent of the federal budget, and with that little bit, NASA does a lot of good work that we need to have done. So, I’m happy to see NASA get more money. That money gets spent here on Earth, for jobs, tech devopment, and so on. For that, I salute President Obama. He’s doing a darn sight more for NASA than the previous occupant of his seat ever did.
But, I think it’s pretty important that we return to the Moon as part of a long-range plan of increased exploration, including going to Mars. Here’s why.
Going to Mars is a long trip. When you get there, there are no backups — no convenient repair shops if something goes wrong. Mars has a pretty hostile environment and we don’t really know what it takes to survive there. However, if we start on the Moon, we can solve problems that crop up when a rescue team is only a couple of hundred thousand miles away, somewhere between 36 million and 250 million miles away. I pretty much guarantee you that if we fling people out to Mars without the proper safeguards and “space colony building” experience, and a disaster happens, it’ll be pointed out forcefully that we should have learned our lesson in near-Earth space first.
So, hell yes, we should go back to the Moon! Take advantage of its closeness to learn how to live in a hostile environment. Please.
Damn straight! I can’t believe they aren’t using the moon as a learning exercise. We are not ready for Mars.
Comment by Merrilee — April 16, 2010 #
The Moon is a very different environment than Mars, saying practice on the Moon is good preparation is like going to a jungle survival school to get ready for a six month stay in Antarctica.
True, you might learn some stuff that is portable to any environment, but most of the training will be irrelevant at best.
Robert Zubrin’s Mars Direct approaches the problem in a sensible manner with remote preparation of the landing site, stockpiling native resources and lots of redundancy in the plan. No need to go to the Moon for any other reason than the Moon has lots of secrets and challenges as well.
Comment by Thucydides — April 19, 2010 #
I agree with Thucydides: the environments are very different. It’s just as good of practice to seal up habitation module and prance around in space suits on Devon Island– which the Mars Society is doing for far, far, far less money than a Moon mission would cost.It is also less dangerous: if something does go wrong, why, our intrepid explorers are right here on Earth! They can still breathe the air if a leak is sprung, for example.
Which is one thing the environments of the Moon and Mars have in common: they’re both incredibly hostile to Earthlife. So hostile that I’m not sure it makes any difference; both will kill you very, very quickly.
Can NASA have a launch-on-demand rescue mission sitting on the pad for all the time men are on the moon? It would break the budget, and a couple days might be too late anyway. Without rescue rocket on the pad, salvation is weeks away–eternity, in a crisis.
Either way, the astronauts are effectively on their own, counting on redundancy and ingenuity to see them through.
It’s like the man said: “If you want to take Vienna, take Vienna.” If you want to go to Mars, don’t risk lives needlessly on a Lunar sideshow. The only reason to go to the Moon is if you have a good reason to go to the Moon; not because you want to go to Mars.
Personally, I look at the Moon/Mars squabbling over destinations and shake my head. All the work it takes to get out of a gravity well, and you just want to jump back into a hole? I’m convinced that the smaller bodies are where the real action is going to be in the coming centuries.
Comment by Tyler August — April 19, 2010 #
You both make good points, and of course I KNOW that the environments of Mars and the Moon are different. But, as one of you points out, the environments of both can kill you quickly — hence, learning to survive on one as a proxy for surviving on the other. The Devon Island and Antarctica experiences serve the same goal as sending Apollo astronauts to Death Valley, Meteor Crater, etc. — it’s training. And training is what helps people survive.
I still think that training on the Moon makes more sense than practicing on an asteroid. The question is proximity if we need to help the folks who are doing the practicing. If we had a fully functioning orbital complex larger than the ISS, we’d be a long way towards being able to understand more of the ramifications of working with, building, and surviving in space installations.
Comment by ccp — April 19, 2010 #
“Can NASA have a launch-on-demand rescue mission sitting on the pad for all the time men are on the moon? It would break the budget, and a couple days might be too late anyway. Without rescue rocket on the pad, salvation is weeks away–eternity, in a crisis.”
You’re thinking Apollo style here.
I think probably one or more ‘in space’ vehicles will travel from a Spacestation to the Moon or Mars and from that landers can descend. So, the rescue will be in Space already.
Comment by Jack — April 21, 2010 #