Why the Moon? Why Not Mars? SpaceX Shifts Sights Closer to Home

^source

If you pay attention to the aerospace world, you've probably noticed rhetoric has shifted away from being bullish for a Mars colony in the near future towards the establishment of a permanent base on the Moon. Why? What changed? Trump, mostly.

Republicans have a long history of favoring a Lunar base over exploring or settling Mars (Newt Gingrich most famously), perhaps because of the obvious military high ground advantage represented by a potential missile base on the Moon. But in fact there are a few compelling practical reasons to target the Moon before Mars.

As a basis for comparison, consider the ISS. It comes under fire frequently by people who don't understand the value it represents. To our detriment, Hollywood scifi creates an inflated idea in the public's head of how advanced spaceflight technology actually is.

^source

When the average joe sees starship battles and terraformed planets in every other scifi film it's easy to understand how they buy into conspiracy theories that the government has secret offworld bases and antigravity spaceships. Because of the false impression movies have given them, they can't believe spaceflight technology hasn't come further by now.

In reality, manned spaceflight is hard. Very, very hard from an engineering standpoint. Prior to the ISS or even MIR, there were plentiful depictions of multi-module spaceships and space stations in science fiction, but nobody had ever actually built one. It looked as if it was already figured out on paper, but nobody had actually made it work.

The problem, as ever, is not the known unknowns. It's the unknown unknowns. Problems inherent, in this case, to not just the construction but long term operation and maintenance of an unprecedented type of spacecraft or habitat which nobody knows about going in.

The value of the ISS was that it served as a testbed and learning experience. What sort of problems do multi-module spacecraft and habitats develop over time? How do you safely repair them without compromising the interior conditions?

The ISS, being in low Earth orbit, could be evacuated if need be. A multi-module base on the Moon, however, can't be evacuated. We needed to know how a permanent habitat on the Moon, assembled module by module, could be sustained over decades without any interruptions to its habitability.

We now have ample experience (rather, NASA does) with long term occupation, operation and maintenance of modular, expandable space habitats thanks to the ISS. This is experience that is directly applicable to a Lunar base. But why a Lunar Base? Why not go straight to Mars?

^source

Because, although Lunar bases have been depicted in science fiction films dating back half a century, nobody's ever actually built one. Like the MIR, it will be the first habitat of its kind, and inevitably there will be unforeseeable problems unique to planetary habitats that we will need to learn how to solve.

It's a good idea to learn those lessons on the Moon, which we can quickly return astronauts from if need be, for the same reason that it was a good idea to learn the lessons the ISS taught us in low Earth orbit. So that if everything goes to shit, we can totally evacuate the base.

Hopefully it never comes to that. But if it does, better it should happen on the Moon than Mars, which we can't return astronauts from in a hurry. Then, after we have an ISS level of experience with longterm occupation, operation and maintenance of a Lunar base, we can apply those lessons to a habitat on the surface of Mars.

Nobody wants to see humans on Mars in their lifespan more than me. But I also don't consider the lives of astronauts to be disposable. They are the best of us, and deserve care and consideration when sending them into the unknown. We need at least a decade of experience operating a Lunar habitat continuously before we could safely operate a habitat on Mars.

^source

---

^{Stay Cozy!}