The future of mankind on the Moon

Topics related to manned space missions

Moderator: clayton

Post Reply
User avatar
Dick Jacobson
Posts: 1397
Joined: Fri Jun 04, 2004 9:21 pm
Location: Cottage Grove, MN

The future of mankind on the Moon

Post by Dick Jacobson »

On the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, how about a discussion of future prospects for humans on the Moon?

When I was watching Armstrong go down the ladder 50 years ago, if someone had told me that the Apollo program would end in a few years and there would be no more footprints on the Moon for 50 years, I wouldn't have believed it. Of course, the intense rivalry with the USSR was the only motivation for spending the necessary money.

Today, it looks like tourism and national prestige could fuel a human return on a small scale. If it was safe and affordable, I'd sign up in a second for a vacation on the Moon. At the moment, the market seems to be restricted to adventurous billionaires.

Settlement by millions of people? I doubt that. Spending the rest of my life confined to pressurized habitats, rovers, and space suits does not sound appealing. Because of the low gravity, providing a breathable atmosphere for the Moon seems unlikely. Perhaps some future cyborgs or re-engineered humans would be happy walking around in a vacuum.

Mining the Moon? I hope not! The lunar surface is a priceless history book, nearly unchanged for over 3 billion years. Strip mining the surface for helium-3 or whatever would be a travesty. If there is a useful resource of hydrogen in the permanently shadowed polar craters, I'd go along with extracting that. If we want resources for building space colonies, I'd much rather see us find a near-Earth asteroid and demolish it, possibly removing a threat to the Earth. Some small asteroids like Bennu and Ryugu appear to be "rubble piles" and it might be easy to disassemble them without blasting.

Compared with the Moon, the South Pole seems like paradise. Science and tourism support a small human presence there, and I think that in the next 50 years the surface of the Moon might develop along the same lines.
30-inch homemade Newtonian with periscope
20-inch homemade equatorial Newtonian with periscope
14-inch homemade equatorial Newtonian
10-inch Newtonian that folds flat
6-inch Russian Maksutov-Newtonian on Vixen equatorial mount
Too many small scopes and binoculars to mention
User avatar
Dale Smith
Posts: 433
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2006 1:11 pm
Location: Plymouth, MN

Re: The future of mankind on the Moon

Post by Dale Smith »

Regarding mining the moon for basic building materials, our current needs would only affect a tiny part of the lunar surface. For example, the Stanford Torus (a 1 mile diameter space station proposed by NASA back in 1975) would weigh about 10,000,000 tons (including radiation shielding). This could be met by excavating a hole about 0.3 mile X 0.3 mile X 33 ft. deep (500 m X 500 m * 10 m). In the short run this needn’t mar the moon’s 20,000,000 sq. mile surface too much. However, I agree that strict limits should be placed to avoid that figure eventually becoming a much larger fraction in the longer term.

I agree that permanently calling the moon home would be a bit sterile. Never being able to take a walk along the beach. Without an atmosphere with an ozone layer the habitats would probably have to be underground to get adequate shielding from the Sun’s UV and solar wind. It would probably be a bit like living out one’s days locked inside the Mall Of America.
Post Reply