I asked this question over at another part of the forum unfortunately it will unlikely be passed over in a topic with David Sereda's name in it.

Here goes my question to the Scientific guys out there...

He 3 appears to be a viable energy option, the interesting thing is its there, we know we could go mine and exploit the moon, but, we havent.
Strange thing is we are looking at spending billions of dollars sending people to mars instead of doing the logical thing (colonizing the moon).

Can anyone find an article explaining why this decision was made? why we are focusing on Mars and not the moon? Why do we want to spend money on traveling to mars and back, which will result in zero revenue, instead of grouping the space industrialists of all space faring countries together to do something profitable?

Here is one of the sources on Helium 3 I'm referring to:

Space.com article

My best guess is because there are more signs that life once existed and can exist on Mars than on the moon. Besides, colonization is not that easy to do. It would take 20 or so more years just to set up a self-sustaining ecosystem on the moon. Our technology isn't quite good enough to colonize the moon just yet. Just think, we would need an ecosystem with food, water, air. temperature control. Also, I don't know how many people are ready to live on the moon just yet.

I think ‘someday’ there will be mining and processing facilities on the Moon, but right now we can barely get people into and back from low Earth orbit safely, we can’t have a shuttle full of miner’s and support personnel vaporized on take off, or on return, only a 100% safe launch system will really open the final frontier...

also the high cost of getting things into space is another limiting factor in why there isn’t more manned exploration, a practical space plane (runway to orbit, and back to runway) with the lifting capacity of say a 747, would really open space...

a UN space agency, where the cost and benefits are shared would help as well... IMO

First of all, the planet Mars is much easier to colonize, because it substains an atmosphere more or less suitable for the astronauts.

But even though, NASA is planning on going to the Moon before visiting Mars in the famous "return to the moon" journey, on this missions they are planning on building an outpost on the Moon, this will open many posibilities including mining, tourism and scientific experiments, by the time we get to Mars this will all be much easier.

My answer is short, but effective.



Actually it really all depends on weight and on the aerodynamics of the vehicle, you can't do a reentry with too much weight or there would be too much friction and you would loose the vehicle.

Magnatude,

We are focusing on the Moon.
We will go back there first, and establish some presence, before heading out toward Mars. That is the plan. It's logical, and necessary. No one will be working on a manned mission to Mars with any intensity until we return to the Moon and continue what we started there. There's a heck of a long road ahead before either Helium 3 or Mars human explorations become realistic ideas...

I think the He₃ issue is greatly overhyped. He₃ will be useful when we have operational fusion reactors. Fusion power is still highly experimental and the best estimates are that no commercial fusion reactor will be built before 2045 - 50 (source: BBC story dated 6th Feb 2006). With the market for He₃ at least 4 decades away, so to say that He₃ is a viable energy soure is jumping the gun. There is simply no market for it yet.

No market = no profit.

Mars has more stuff to use so you can "live off the land"

I read a book about it once...

Agreed, Waspie.
That's one of the reasons I say that talk about mining the Moon, or living off the land of Mars, or whatever futuristic exploitative ideas are put forth are just way premature...

We've only just waded out off the shore a wee bit concerning lunar exploration. I think we need to learn how to swim halfway decently before thinking about going any farther.

Agreed. I have no doubt one day such things will occur but not for a generation or two yet.

I also agree to a certain extent with Killer Moth, there are more resources to help sustain a colony on Mars, but this is still by know means easy. The Biosphere 2 project showed this. Constructed to test a closed environment (growing it's own food, total recycling of air and water, etc.). The idea was that it would show that a colony could exist without needing exra resources from Earth. In this respect it failed as extra oxygen had to be pumped in.

Unless or until we can produce such a self contained colony then it will be easier to live on the Moon, siply because of it's proximity to Earth. It is much easier to survive when resupplies or rescue are just a few days away rather than many months.

Ansolutely nothing I can add to that!

Straight to the point, and astute, as always, Waspie!

I read, and now can't remember where, that because the Moon is a catacomb of tunnels, it wouldn't be stable enough to mine, since they don't know if it would start to collapse onto itself if we started messing around with it. Mars seems more solid to establish mining colonies.

the moon has water and o2. we just have to learn how to distill it.

Actually I do believe they are getting ready to construct an elevator to space also I was watching some space news a couple years back... It seems that what they're planning to do is to construct hotels on the moon by about 2040 or 2060 as well as stations to launch ships... their explanation was that if they could launch from the moon instead of earth they would save millions on launch because of the low gravity on the moon allowing them to get to mars a lot cheaper.

So I'm just guessing that the plan is get the rich scientists and engineers up there to live in 5 star hotels... then use the elevator to ship supplies and parts... construct the ships up there and launch off to Mars.

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But on a more stable note I would say we should construct the earth first all this stuff is ridiculous when a majority of the earth is living in poverty and theres always rumors of some large scale war about to hit off...

And who do you think is gonna get there first? China or America? America is ahead now but I heard China is aiming to be the 3rd Country on the moon... not only that but They're growing faster than America lol.. A report said they're pumping out about 500,000 Engineers every year while America is only pumping like 10,000... At any rate they apparently produced a laser capable of hitting out satellite sensors all the way from earth.

we have a laser that can destroy a sat. from the surface. the only reason we don't count it as a weapon is because it is an engine design.

This is by no means certain.

In 1996 the Clementine probe discovered the signature of hydrogen in craters at the lunar poles. These craters are always in shadow and hence always extremely cold. It is hypothesized that this hydrogen could be due to the prsence of water ice. However further attempts to confirm the prsence of water in these craters has so far drawn a blank. If there is water ice on the moon then this could be used as a source of O₂ by spliting the H₂O in to its constituant parts.

A further attempt to identify water ice in these craters will be made by the LCROSS mission, which will be launched along with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter later this year.

your looking in the wrong place. the water is in the soil grains. it can be distilled out but right now it takes more energy than it is worth. got this off of the science channel. don't remember the name of the show. the o2 is in the same place.

Firstly there is no water in lunar soil,:
Source: The NASA document, JSC-1: A NEW LUNAR SOIL SIMULANT.

Secondly, although by weight, lunar soil is 43% oxygen it does not exists as free O₂, It is chemically bound in the form of such minerals as silicon dioxide, iron oxide, magnesiun oxide etc. In other words this oxygen exists in lunat soil in exactly the same way as it exists in terrestrial soil. It is not simply a matter of distilling out the O₂, it requires some complex chemistry. Producing water would add an extra layer of complexity as a source of hydrogen would also be necessary.

A NASA article on this O₂ in lunar soil can be found here: Breathing Moonrocks.

It will be a fair time before it is practicle to remove this oxygen from the soil in sufficient quantities to support a colony. NASA's beat hope at the moment is the existance ot that ice at the poles. It would be far easier to extract water and O₂ from his ice. It is for this reason that NASA is trying to confirm it's existance.

Why does everything need a monetary value?
And maybe Mars just to displace the massive population of Earth. Mars after all may have water(ice), while it is unlikely the moon does (ice)(but not impossible).
The moon has such a low mass it will be hard to find heavier metals like Iron and Silver, but it does have a region rich in titanium, which is not worth going and getting when we plenty of it here. Mars is predicted to be low in Iron as well.

Well, the reason is thats the way the US works. Yes there are organizations that will explore resulting in spent money, now. However at the current rate the US is moving towards Corporatism, it will only become a matter of years before the financial "gain" overcomes the will for expensive exploratory expenditures.

One aspect I'm attempting to figure out (For my own Graphic Novel in the works) is how Corporatism is going to effect public access to space.
Anyways I thank all of you for providing more insight on this topic.

maybe because Mars is more intersting.. has a viable water supply an atmosphere.. and easier to terraform...

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=0414prqf