Well yes, but that's mostly because satellites are usually run until they run out of control gas. It's factored in to expected satellite lifetime, the same way corrosion is factored in to expected car lifetime or what not. There is really no great advantage to the Moon compared to high Earth orbit or (better yet) SEL2 as an astronomical platform except for radio telescopes, and even there EML2 is easier to get to and nearly as good except for the really big stuff.
Moon base
- Thread starter Atomicwalrus
- Start date
Well yes, but that's mostly because satellites are usually run until they run out of control gas. It's factored in to expected satellite lifetime, the same way corrosion is factored in to expected car lifetime or what not. There is really no great advantage to the Moon compared to high Earth orbit or (better yet) SEL2 as an astronomical platform except for radio telescopes, and even there EML2 is easier to get to and nearly as good except for the really big stuff.
The great advantage is an extremely stable platform, pretty well impossible without huge amounts of stabilizing gas for microcorrections and a hypersensitive control -- which simply was not available by non lunar methods in the 1970's for this TL. It would have been technically possible for a moonbase to provide these as a service at considerable profit, or so I guess. Most times with ground breaking remote infrastructure projects, like mining, one does not know what is possible until local conditions avail themselves and the bugs and fine adjustments have been ironed out.
Otherwise, rather quite correct in your assessment.
Well, the difficulty is that there aren't any space observatories in the 1970s that need that; all there were were some solar observatories and some high-energy observatories, and those weren't much. They did fine without the Moon, so I suppose they didn't need it. The Hubble/LST was never supposed to launch before the 1980s, and it worked fine except for the mirror problems. I've never heard of pointing problems at all for it, actually. It uses mostly gyros, so surely that could have been done? Skylab used gyros too, so there was certainly a '70s era tech base for it.
Basically, I don't think these pointing problems are so serious. There haven't been any lunar observatories at all, but everything from the '60s era OAOs on up has been very valuable to the astronomical community.
EDIT: Actually, correction to the last part about "no great advantage": I just thought of one area where the Moon would have an advantage over both terrestrial and space-borne telescopes. Permanently shadowed craters at the poles might be used as a base for infrared telescopes that could function with little or no cryogenic coolant to stay at operational temperatures, giving them a greatly expanded lifetime compared to space-borne telescopes. However, this is rather...niche, to say the least.
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[EDIT: Actually, correction to the last part about "no great advantage": I just thought of one area where the Moon would have an advantage over both terrestrial and space-borne telescopes. Permanently shadowed craters at the poles might be used as a base for infrared telescopes that could function with little or no cryogenic coolant to stay at operational temperatures, giving them a greatly expanded lifetime compared to space-borne telescopes. However, this is rather...niche, to say the least.[/QUOTE]
There is also the radio shielding thing. No, you aren't going to get radio telescopes in a big way in the 70s, but not being exposed to pollution from earth helps quite a bit when they do appear.
There is also the radio shielding thing. No, you aren't going to get radio telescopes in a big way in the 70s, but not being exposed to pollution from earth helps quite a bit when they do appear.
My two cents
I agree with folks upthread, putting a base on the moon was possible mid-1970's. The big issues in play are, getting the people back and forth, trying to get the launch costs out of Earth's gravity well down to something reasonable and giving the folks on the moon something to do worth the investment.
I'd love to see Paul K O'Neill's colonies made real, with lunar material and solar energy.
I love pure science research. The moon would be a great place to do HEP experiments that wouldn't dim the lights in Chicago or Geneva, but that'd require a couple of decades' investment to get the transport infrastructure and roughly 750 billion to get the gear and people there, assembled, operational, and so forth.
That sticker chock and the fact that you had a couple of technical question marks (with no readily-available and acceptablesolutions) as to how to scale up space transport capacity to make that possible were deal-breakers when the US wanted to trim costs after Apollo.
I agree, Congress' failure of nerve screwed MSF from being more than an orbital enterprise for possibly fifty years which I think is a crying shame.
It remains to be seen if it's kept humanity from ever escaping this mudball.
I think not, but considering the grim demographic picture by 2050, we'll have other more pressing concerns and less resources available to do it.
I agree with folks upthread, putting a base on the moon was possible mid-1970's. The big issues in play are, getting the people back and forth, trying to get the launch costs out of Earth's gravity well down to something reasonable and giving the folks on the moon something to do worth the investment.
I'd love to see Paul K O'Neill's colonies made real, with lunar material and solar energy.
I love pure science research. The moon would be a great place to do HEP experiments that wouldn't dim the lights in Chicago or Geneva, but that'd require a couple of decades' investment to get the transport infrastructure and roughly 750 billion to get the gear and people there, assembled, operational, and so forth.
That sticker chock and the fact that you had a couple of technical question marks (with no readily-available and acceptablesolutions) as to how to scale up space transport capacity to make that possible were deal-breakers when the US wanted to trim costs after Apollo.
I agree, Congress' failure of nerve screwed MSF from being more than an orbital enterprise for possibly fifty years which I think is a crying shame.
It remains to be seen if it's kept humanity from ever escaping this mudball.
I think not, but considering the grim demographic picture by 2050, we'll have other more pressing concerns and less resources available to do it.
Actually, no. You can put radio telescopes at EML2 and get the same radio quiet benefits, except for very large (= low frequency) telescopes, while having them be easier to get to in delta-V terms than lunar surface telescopes. But we don't produce much low frequency noise, anyways.
Question: With today's technology, resources, and such, what would be required to have a self sustained lunar base in the present, as far as cost, and things needed to be built.
That's a bit of a complicated question. The biggest advantage we today have is knowing about the south polar permanently shadowed craters and their "peaks of light". That means we would have a much easier time of producing air and water than a mid-70s base would, and a much easier time of producing round-the-clock power. Also, being *truly* self-sufficient would be very difficult. The Moon is likely to always need imports of some materials, particularly organic materials (CHON-type things) and, at least at first, of some high-technology goods (computer chips and the like) which would be more expensive to produce on the Moon than to ship up. Obviously, it would also be quite something to be self-sufficient in population (ie., have a large permanent population).
That said...it would be very expensive, many billions of dollars would probably be needed just to ship the necessary materials to the Moon in the first place. And you would need to build quite a lot of "stuff" to house a decently-sized base that produced even a decent fraction of its life support requirements on site rather than relying on Earth-based resupply.
Myself, I haven't a clue beyond "quite a bit", but you might try digging around in here: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/ . He's got a lot of details and equations on both present and plausible future technology.
I meant self-sufficiency to the extent of food, air, water and other nessasary living expensese, along with electricity and other such things.
Okay, so self-sufficiency in the sense that the base can produce it's own life support needs (food, air, water). Electricity production is going to be a part of any base design, and it would be very impractical to have a fully lunar supply chain for production for, oh, a very long time. Well, the sticky part there is the food production. Water and air production would not be particularly difficult with the expected polar ice deposits, but growing enough food to support even a small crew would be very difficult and complicated by the wonky lunar day/night cycle. The best way to deal with that would probably to use caverns (artificial or natural) under the peaks of eternal light and use lightpipes to illuminate the plants themselves, allowing for Earth-like day/night cycles and even psuedo-seasonality. You couldn't grow anything that needed frosts, but anything else would probably be more or less okay. So no apples, but maybe tropical fruits instead.
Again, this would be expensive and require moving a lot of "stuff" to the Moon. If you're okay with a partially self-sufficient base (just needs food), then it's not that bad, you could probably get fairly close after just two or three flights.
Foods actually kind of the big part
I'm working on a story about life on a moon base that has been but off from Earth aside from salvage missions and such.A moon base doesn't need to be even close to self-sufficient because there's no point even having it if people aren't going to be coming and going regularly. I think that if it was self sufficient in bulk stuff like air, water, power, building materials and perhaps grew some of it's own food the visiting crew vehicles could carry a lot of other stuff that you'd never bother making on the moon.
I'll take a slightly different POD that establishes the space program as a progressive, linear approach to getting to the moon in the first place.
Stage 1: Probes of the outer atmosphere, space in earth orbit.
Stage 2: Manned sub-orbital and orbital flights akin to Mercury program.
Stage 3: Manned orbital flights akin to Gemini program with more focus on Agena and EVA exercises.
Stage 4: EOS 1. Basically, Apollo that doesn't go to the moon, rather, Apollo completely dedicated to missions to a Skylab type, monolithic space station.
Stage 5: EOS 2 and Shuttle. Construction of a modular Earth Orbit Station serviced by a more efficient and cost effective STS.
Stage 6: Next generation STS, modernization of EOS, construction of reusable Lunar Expeditionary Vessel (LEV) that stages out of EOS and carries manned missions back and forth from the moon to EOS.
Stage 7: Temporary lunar habitations and lunar survey missions.
Stage 8: Permanent manned Lunar Base for research and study of feasibility of interplanetary missions. Specifically, to Mars and beyond.
Going by that, I'll say, man on the moon in the late 1980's/early 1990's, permanent base by 2000 at the earliest, 2010 at the latest.
I always felt that we did things out of sequence; we went to the moon first, THEN we spent the next 40 years doing stuff in near earth orbit.
IMHO, I think we should have done it the other way around; Do all the earth orbit stuff first, establish an orbital staging area for lunar missions first, THEN go to the moon.
My opinion, it's not about who gets there first (and yes, I'm old enough to remember the Cold War, but I see it as immaterial in the grand scheme of things) it's who establishes the sustained presence there first and accomplishes the most once they get there.
If that means we get there 20 years later than OTL, that's okay, because we still get there and aren't left pining for the days when NASA actually DID something in the present because in the present of this ATL, it's going to moon regularly to do work on the lunar base and can cast an eye towards Mars and beyond, with no lack of public interest in future exploration.
Stage 1: Probes of the outer atmosphere, space in earth orbit.
Stage 2: Manned sub-orbital and orbital flights akin to Mercury program.
Stage 3: Manned orbital flights akin to Gemini program with more focus on Agena and EVA exercises.
Stage 4: EOS 1. Basically, Apollo that doesn't go to the moon, rather, Apollo completely dedicated to missions to a Skylab type, monolithic space station.
Stage 5: EOS 2 and Shuttle. Construction of a modular Earth Orbit Station serviced by a more efficient and cost effective STS.
Stage 6: Next generation STS, modernization of EOS, construction of reusable Lunar Expeditionary Vessel (LEV) that stages out of EOS and carries manned missions back and forth from the moon to EOS.
Stage 7: Temporary lunar habitations and lunar survey missions.
Stage 8: Permanent manned Lunar Base for research and study of feasibility of interplanetary missions. Specifically, to Mars and beyond.
Going by that, I'll say, man on the moon in the late 1980's/early 1990's, permanent base by 2000 at the earliest, 2010 at the latest.
I always felt that we did things out of sequence; we went to the moon first, THEN we spent the next 40 years doing stuff in near earth orbit.
IMHO, I think we should have done it the other way around; Do all the earth orbit stuff first, establish an orbital staging area for lunar missions first, THEN go to the moon.
My opinion, it's not about who gets there first (and yes, I'm old enough to remember the Cold War, but I see it as immaterial in the grand scheme of things) it's who establishes the sustained presence there first and accomplishes the most once they get there.
If that means we get there 20 years later than OTL, that's okay, because we still get there and aren't left pining for the days when NASA actually DID something in the present because in the present of this ATL, it's going to moon regularly to do work on the lunar base and can cast an eye towards Mars and beyond, with no lack of public interest in future exploration.
If you mean a real START to establishing a self-sustaining lunar settlement then, with any luck, we'll be seeing that in the next 20 years. The two keys, to me, are (1) robotics for lunar construction and (2) a robust, maximally-reusable cislunar transport infrastructure. Both are achievable with early 2000s technology. With a POD as late as the end of Apollo, you can get there by the 1990s, but the big AH problem is you have to take a completely different track than STS.
As I've noted above, a better POD, in terms of the end goal of establishing a lunar settlement, is earlier: If you can avoid the Moon Race, then you can definitely get there before 2000. But the problem with that is you get an infestation of deadly butterflies: To get rid of the Moon Race, you (probably) have to change the Cold War significantly. (Although maybe not: The US military had some mid- to late-50s studies on lunar bases that were very much motivated by the Cold War, seeing the moon as some kind of ultimate high ground -- probably wrong-headed, though ...) If you change the Cold War too much, then you may lose the push to solid state and microelectronics, which can kill your robotics and make your other needed aerospace technology heavier, more expensive and less reliable.
It's a tough problem and one that may not be solvable without ASBism.
1946!
A suggested technicality of the 'probably wrong-headed' part, if you will excuse me:
First in 1946 and then the late 1950's-1970, and maybe to the present, the moon was used as a military communications and passive repeater. The later date was for evesdropping uses. It did not need any infrastructure beyond that naturally in place, however.
So in the strictest literal sense our Earth's Moon very much _was_ the military high ground from the earliest cold war years, although in OTL only as a rebound base. The US military first did this in January 10, 1946, but it was proposed in 1940 by a Briton. It is called EME -- Earth Moon Earth communications. Foreign monitoring and detection methods were also later used. It most certainly does show what might have been possible in AH TL. The Moon bounce back was apparently the reason why radio astronomy was suddenly an easy government funded project. And all they wanted was a couple hours a month when the allignment was ideal (Libration/orbital planes toward high inclination of Russia?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration
With an actual moon base, specialized methods of all wavelengths would have A) been a lodestone of information B) would have eventually been found out and restricted USSR to doing a lot of stuff when the moon was below the horizon at that location of the country. C) If memory serves right, President Johnson proposed and signed the Space Treaty outlawing the militarization of space along with claiming any territory beyond the immediate base area. This apparently permitted satellites, and maybe monitoring from the moon, but not armed camps/etc.
EME (communications)
"Earth-Moon-Earth, also known as moon bounce, is a radio communications technique which relies on the propagation of radio waves from an Earth-based transmitter directed via reflection from the surface of the Moon back to an Earth-based receiver."
Most practical in VHF from the moon. Amazingly for superior listening capablities of much lesser wavelengths, a electronic window open when USSR rockets were launched was found effective in the 1960's (bistatic intercept reciever, originally with US balloons over Russia picking up the P-20 Token Radar). The Russian _rockets_ were routinely acting as a reflector for snapshot profiles of huge numbers of USSR general EMF transmissions!
The Cold War was a lot more complicated than people generally think nowadays, and some parts still have not been disclosed. Also a lot well known to more technical persons seems sort of forgotten now. Personally speaking this is pretty old news, verbally about 1972 from my Popular Science reading brother.
More as a general primer of the period tempo is found here:
http://sciencestage.com/v/14284/secret-history-of-silicon-valley.html
This image below is for finding moon ice, but shows the general reflection:
A suggested technicality of the 'probably wrong-headed' part, if you will excuse me:
First in 1946 and then the late 1950's-1970, and maybe to the present, the moon was used as a military communications and passive repeater. The later date was for evesdropping uses. It did not need any infrastructure beyond that naturally in place, however.
So in the strictest literal sense our Earth's Moon very much _was_ the military high ground from the earliest cold war years, although in OTL only as a rebound base. The US military first did this in January 10, 1946, but it was proposed in 1940 by a Briton. It is called EME -- Earth Moon Earth communications. Foreign monitoring and detection methods were also later used. It most certainly does show what might have been possible in AH TL. The Moon bounce back was apparently the reason why radio astronomy was suddenly an easy government funded project. And all they wanted was a couple hours a month when the allignment was ideal (Libration/orbital planes toward high inclination of Russia?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration
With an actual moon base, specialized methods of all wavelengths would have A) been a lodestone of information B) would have eventually been found out and restricted USSR to doing a lot of stuff when the moon was below the horizon at that location of the country. C) If memory serves right, President Johnson proposed and signed the Space Treaty outlawing the militarization of space along with claiming any territory beyond the immediate base area. This apparently permitted satellites, and maybe monitoring from the moon, but not armed camps/etc.
EME (communications)
"Earth-Moon-Earth, also known as moon bounce, is a radio communications technique which relies on the propagation of radio waves from an Earth-based transmitter directed via reflection from the surface of the Moon back to an Earth-based receiver."
Most practical in VHF from the moon. Amazingly for superior listening capablities of much lesser wavelengths, a electronic window open when USSR rockets were launched was found effective in the 1960's (bistatic intercept reciever, originally with US balloons over Russia picking up the P-20 Token Radar). The Russian _rockets_ were routinely acting as a reflector for snapshot profiles of huge numbers of USSR general EMF transmissions!
The Cold War was a lot more complicated than people generally think nowadays, and some parts still have not been disclosed. Also a lot well known to more technical persons seems sort of forgotten now. Personally speaking this is pretty old news, verbally about 1972 from my Popular Science reading brother.
More as a general primer of the period tempo is found here:
http://sciencestage.com/v/14284/secret-history-of-silicon-valley.html
This image below is for finding moon ice, but shows the general reflection:
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If the US put more money in to the Rocket programs after WW2, I would say by the mid to late 60s you could have a semi permanent base on the moon with teams staying for 2 to 3 weeks and a new team using the site every 3 to 6 months.
For A permanent base using the same idea as above I would stay the late 70s to early 80s for that one.
No, not really. There are two really significant facts about the space race in this context. First, the American side of thing was heavily, heavily driven by Soviet firsts. If the Americans did it first, it wasn't very interesting. For example, the first weather satellite, TIROS, and the first active communications satellite, Telstar, were both American, and both have objectively had a far greater impact on the world than every crewed mission ever flown put together. Yet I bet at least a few people on this thread didn't know that the US did those things first.
Second, the Soviet side of things was (especially especially early on, which due to the above factor was highly critical in ensuring that the space race went the way it did) heavily driven by exactly one person--Khrushchev, and his desire for propaganda spectaculars. Notice how drastically the Soviet program slumped after his ouster, and how right up to 1991 they didn't push the really spectacular firsts nearly half as much.
Put a different person in there and, well, foreign policy is going to change, true, but it doesn't necessarily have to make the Cold War unrecognizable. It might, however, lead the Soviets to fail to beat the Americans to several critical firsts (first satellite and first crewed flight in particular), which will effectively kill the space race dead. The Americans won't have Soviet firsts to drive them onwards, and the Soviets won't have the opportunity for propaganda stunts and spectaculars to make them invest except for mundane utility. Sure, there will be crewed flights (the business end people are too invested for there not to be), but nothing like OTL.
Not Focused on Astronomy
I have been busy so did not answer this before. But if one reads my postings, there has never been any great emphasis on astronomy. Astronomy is a weak commercial venture, unstable with grant funds. Like my post illustrates a couple days ago, it is said by Silicon Valley historians that American radio astronomy got a huge $ shot in the arm when it was discovered that we could recieve passive LOS communications hostile (and non hostile) nations had in defiliation (non LOS), turning an astronomy device into a military ear. This makes sense.
In other words, by Lunar Rebound (EME) we were then able to see which frequencies were being used, to roughly range where they were coming from for radar, and evesdrop on communications. This was in the late 1950's, and land locked giants of USSR/PRC were the needed areas. Orbiting satellites soon superceeded the irregularly scheduled and limited functions of most of this, but it was still nice to have as a backup.
To have a large device, or initially not so large communication or recieving device on the moon could easily have had huge advantages, even a layman like myself can see that. Or at least that is what I am suggesting, commercial communications and military evesdropping equipment, with a very minor focus on astronomy, perhaps early planetary disc observation with resolution issues as selling point advantage.
Again, the money is where one would have focused any colony that wanted to survive and grow. And the commercial aspects, at best, were a window opportunity that should be expected to greatly diminsh post 1990 in OTL due to advancements in technology and satellites, but enough to get a critical mass of infrastructure in place.
The hypothetical colony would have not been able to anticipate this, so the idea of putting up the capital is not at all unlikely, just as hugely expensive circa 1968 microwave towers are all over Germany, mostly obsolete or redundant I have heard.
All of this is for 1970-1990 needs. Anyway, it is not a big issue, and I will drop it unless pressing for some one out there.
Very possibly you are correct.
I have been busy so did not answer this before. But if one reads my postings, there has never been any great emphasis on astronomy. Astronomy is a weak commercial venture, unstable with grant funds. Like my post illustrates a couple days ago, it is said by Silicon Valley historians that American radio astronomy got a huge $ shot in the arm when it was discovered that we could recieve passive LOS communications hostile (and non hostile) nations had in defiliation (non LOS), turning an astronomy device into a military ear. This makes sense.
In other words, by Lunar Rebound (EME) we were then able to see which frequencies were being used, to roughly range where they were coming from for radar, and evesdrop on communications. This was in the late 1950's, and land locked giants of USSR/PRC were the needed areas. Orbiting satellites soon superceeded the irregularly scheduled and limited functions of most of this, but it was still nice to have as a backup.
To have a large device, or initially not so large communication or recieving device on the moon could easily have had huge advantages, even a layman like myself can see that. Or at least that is what I am suggesting, commercial communications and military evesdropping equipment, with a very minor focus on astronomy, perhaps early planetary disc observation with resolution issues as selling point advantage.
Again, the money is where one would have focused any colony that wanted to survive and grow. And the commercial aspects, at best, were a window opportunity that should be expected to greatly diminsh post 1990 in OTL due to advancements in technology and satellites, but enough to get a critical mass of infrastructure in place.
The hypothetical colony would have not been able to anticipate this, so the idea of putting up the capital is not at all unlikely, just as hugely expensive circa 1968 microwave towers are all over Germany, mostly obsolete or redundant I have heard.
All of this is for 1970-1990 needs. Anyway, it is not a big issue, and I will drop it unless pressing for some one out there.
Cook
Banned
Possibly useful:
http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw30.html
Freeman Dyson on Space said:
Freeman Dyson on Space said:
http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw30.html