From: fox-r@neuron.cis.ohio-state.edu (Richard K Fox)
Subject: Re: Lunar colony: why?
Originator: fox-r@neuron.cis.ohio-state.edu
Reply-To: fox-r@cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: Ohio State Computer Science
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 15:57:21 GMT


   Wow, an empty newsgroup!

Not any more!!  Let's see some good postings here.

   Since i am posting, i should offer some gristle to start on.  How about this: i
   am 21; Spacelab in orbit this decade, maybe lunar mission as well; include
   about fifteen years of downtime for nasa at any rate; will there be a lunar
   colony in my lifetime?  And why do we need one?
   I think that a lunar colony at this point in time would be a major shopping
   spree that the world economy can not afford to go on.  The reasons seem to me
   to be purely scientific.  Though there is some thought as to the limited
   resouces and living space that earth has to offer, i think it would be wiser to
   dedicate resources to solving problems rather than running from them.  


No, a lunar colony should not be too expensive for the human race to afford.
It should actually be high on our priority list.  Why?  Why do we need
any kind of manned space colonies?

1)  Move industry into orbit - better microcircuitry production in 0 grav,
better chemical processing in 0 grav, etc...  No pollution, no risk
of industrial accidents (which we see more and more)

2)  Solar power collectors - imagine getting all of our power from solar
energy collectors in orbit around earth and/or the moon.  Beaming
energy as microwaves is a possibility which would save on the expense
of moving energy around as we do now (by tankers which can wreck, and
trains which can also wreck)

3)  Why do we need a lunar colony?  Any space community will not be
self sufficient.  It will require resources that can only be found
on planets or asteroids.  Well, the moon has many if not all of the
resources in the lunar rock.  We need a lunar base for two reasons.
first, to get oxygen, nitrogen, and whatever other elements are needed
in their raw form to support a space habitat.  Secondly, if we
are talking about a real community, with children, we will need a place
with some gravity for children to be conceived and born, and possibly
to live part of their lives on.  We will not have space stations for
a long time that could simulate a great enough gravity as the moon (1/6 g).

4)  Launchpad for other colonies and exploration.  It is much too expensive
to build space ships on Earth and launch them.  Much of our expense goes
into the rockets used to boast a ship into orbit.   Why not build our
crafts in orbit.  The ships will not need to be as strong (i.e. if
they never go into a gravity field, the material does not need to be
our strongest, most heat-resistant metals).  We will not need huge
rockets to lift the ship off.  We can concentrate on the crafts themselves
and not the rockets.  By using asteroids or moon rocks, we can mine for
metals in order to build these ships in orbit.  However, before we can
build them in orbit, we need the space industries and lunar bases in
order to make the metals...

These are the reasons we should start building our space industries.  It
will take a 100 years for these visions to come true (at least, at our
current rate of space progress) but in the end, it will be worth it.
As for, what will we live to see?  Certainly more exploration of the Moon
and Mars.  But I don't know if we will live long enough to see the
massive space industries that we need.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Fox				| fox-r@cis.ohio-state.edu
Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence  |
	Research			| from the depths of the
The Ohio State University 		| Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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