posted 03-10-2016 11:49 AM               

"The reason all the previous plans for going back to the moon have failed is that they're just way too expensive," says McKay. "The space program is living in a delusion of unlimited budgets, which traces back to Apollo."

...the New Space papers, by contrast, conclude that we could set up a small lunar base for $10 billion or less, and we could do it by 2022.

"The big takeaway," says McKay, "is that new technologies, some of which have nothing to do with space — like self-driving cars and waste-recycling toilets — are going to be incredibly useful in space, and are driving down the cost of a moon base to the point where it might be easy to do."

posted 03-10-2016 01:30 PM               

A Lunar Station can provide many benefits to NASA and the country.

It would serve as a necessary step between our current capabilities in LEO and our aspirations to establish a permanent presence on Mars. It can provide a testing and proving ground for a variety of important advanced technologies and capabilities, including robotics, ISRU, resource depots, deep-space crew habitats, closed-loop life support, in-space propulsion, optical communication, and space-additive manufacturing to name a few.

Its unique lunar environment, including large permanently shaded craters with temperatures as low as 40°K (-388°F), offers opportunities for new scientific observations, exploration, investigation, and learning.

The Lunar Station will give our space program a much-needed logical next step to strengthen its relevance to the U.S. public, its leadership in the international community, and its technical cutting edge.

posted 03-24-2016 10:58 AM               

Nuclear reactors on Earth use nuclear fission (break the atoms) to produce electricity. We don't know how to master nuclear fusion (join the atoms). Right now fusion consumes more electricity than it produces. We are a long, long way to master this technology. Add a dose of Fukushima over the whole thing to make it a little bit more dubious.

posted 03-24-2016 05:54 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by cspg:
It's always funny to me when countries or agencies talk about mining another celestial body when they can't even lift someone into low Earth orbit...

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posted 03-25-2016 05:53 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by mode1charlie:
Your skepticism of fusion's medium-term prospects may be based on ITER, which is turning into a bureacratic boondoggle.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mode1charlie:
As for "Fukushima": you're thinking of fission.

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posted 03-25-2016 06:03 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Blackarrow:
It must have sounded extremely funny to the Soviets and others when President Kennedy tasked NASA to land a man on the Moon within 8 years when America "...couldn't even lift someone into low Earth orbit..."

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posted 03-26-2016 09:09 AM            

Unfortunately, the commercial nuclear power industry does not follow the business model of the commercial aviation industry. Boeing will propose a new design and solicit interest among the airlines. There will be pre-orders and Boeing will proceed with design, flight testing and certification. Much of the development cost will be paid by Boeing. There is not much, if any, involvement of the public in the design process. Production is then done on an assembly line basis where economies of scale drive down the price.

In commercial nuclear power, each aspect mentioned above is addressed in the exact opposite manner. Throw in state regulators and things get more complicated.