Is there anyone that would like to speculate in how they are going to set up the future base on the moon.

Are there blueprints at this point,there has to be some sort of early plans on how to do this?

And how big is it supposed to be/how many astronauts/scientists when finished?

Water,food oxygen?

Hmm...

It's going to happen eventually. If NASA don't do it, the Chinese or the Europeans will.

I think the only practical reason for building a base on the moon would be, presuming that we can extract useful resources from the moon, to make it into a base for space exploration and colonization beyond the moon. Getting off the earth requires so much energy because of the high gravity and atmosphere, but getting spacecraft off the moon is much easier. I think the only practical way would be, once we've figured out how to use the resources, to send up robots to start building a base, and then send people when it is at a habitable stage.


Like I said...hmmm?

The nuts and bolts of any Moon habitation is well down the road in the future.

There is 'drift' at NASA over the Shuttle and ISS. The hands-on capabilities are eroding and don't assume their will be a ready made infrastructure in place to 'go back to the Moon'...let alone put any yet-to-be-though-out small living quarters in place.

Something goes wrong on the ISS and everyone hops on the taxi and comes home. Something goes wrong on a moon base and ?.

Hopefully I'm just on a negative rant and in 25 years McDonalds will put up a sign on their lunar franchise declaring one million sold as some astronaut bites into his McMoon Burger.

Dear God you're right, if McDonalds built on the Moon that's the first thing they'd create, the McMoon burger, I can see it now.

I recently went to Egypt, and over there they have the McArabia, a grilled kofte kebab in a lightly toasted pitta.

Comercialism at its best

I think we are aiming to start colonization of the moon in around 10 years time.

Although there is also a plan to start a settlement on mars that isn't to long away. heres a recent article

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/05..._homestead.html


Heres something a you can look at, loads of details about the project and pictures. http://www.marshome.org/files2/MarsHomeOve...d-8-12-05.ppt#1

and heres their website http://www.marshome.org/

10 years !!!


50 maby!

50? Where did you get that number from

Same place you got 10 from.

But 50 is more resonable,remember the 60s,there was a "space race"on with Russians.

We never whent to the moon for science,it was during the cold war ,everyone was afraid off a "comunist moon".

Now,2005,there is no real motive to go back to the moon or a manned mission to Mars.

No, we have a reason to go to the moon, better space experiments and research. With a base on the moon, we would not have to spend millions and millions maybe even billions of dollars on huge rockets and fuel to blast out of the Earth's atmosphere.

Well we still would but it would be better spent on space construction, etc then research, we would also be sending more and more stuff to the moon for resuply.

~Thanato

I agree there is no motive to go to the moon. Unless a bunch of commercial companies will compete against each other on citizens space travel, moon hotels etc, that would be another boost like the Cold War

There are quite a few reasons to build a habitat on the moon, however IMO, they are all directly related to manned missions. I do not believe there is anything available on the moon that's not available on Earth.

I believe if we do start sending manned missions to mars, the moon would be the best stepping stone to get us there. If for no other reason that to place a refinery on the moon to extract fuel. The problem is, we have to get into the mindset that we need people up there. Personally, I believe we do because, well we have people everywhere else we can get to.

Here is the way I would like to see us move forward.

First we need to make the decision that we want a permanent human presence on the moon. Who cares if we have to rotate them out every three months or so, we just need to make the decision.

Next, we develop the habitat. Without getting into a bunch of specifics, I believe we can develop a habitat that could be used on mars, on the moon or just in space, kind of like a tent can be used in a forest, in a desert or even hanging off the side of a mountain or in the arctic. One, multi purpose design that can be deployed whereever we need it.

Add some "Warehouse Pods" to ISS. This would allow us to launch several unmanned flights to rally the cargo to a single point in space. This would serve as a staging area for the initial moon flight. The CEV/LEM unit would be assembled at the ISS staging area. The crew would fly up seperately for the mission.

Once everything is assembled in LEO, the crew hops in for a burn to the moon. Once in a lunar orbit, first, the cargo pods are dropped to the colony site. Once the pods are down, the crew will land on the site and begin assembly.

The next step would be to insert a staging area in lunar orbit, similar to using ISS as a staging area. This way, you can have craft whose sole job is transport people or cargo from space station to space station. this way, the only launch vehicles needed would be from earth to LEO or Moon to LLO.

Personally, I believe this is the most cost efficient way of colonizing the moon and eventually, mars.

And like someone said here,it will be expensive for only one country or one company to do this.

Next manned mission to the moon and eventually Mars will be an international operation,just hope Im around to whatch it.

We can't even finish the ISS, What makes anyone think that we'll be able to get parts up to the moon? Until they find a better way to get into space using something other than oil, All flights should be haulted.

They don't use oil. The space shuttle for instance uses Liquid hydrogen and Oxygen for it's main engines and the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) use an ammonium perchlorate (oxidizer, 69.6 percent by weight), aluminum (fuel, 16 percent), iron oxide (a catalyst, 0.4 percent), a polymer (a binder that holds the mixture together, 12.04 percent), and an epoxy curing agent (1.96 percent). Burning oil would be extremely inefficient.

We need to go to the moon, and we need to go to mars its that simple. We can get to the moon and colonize it by 2015 adn mars by 2020-2030. But what it all depends on is motive and money.

~Thanato

Researchers have identified what may be the perfect place for a Moon base, a crater rim near the lunar north pole that's in near-constant sunlight.

Equally important, in the permanently shadowed depths of craters around the lunar north pole, water ice may lurk,



http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0504...on_perfect.html

Artemis Project

Anyone ever heard of that? I haven't read about it much, but I came across that site a few years back when I was doing a school project. I guess its a private enterprise to establish a moon base. I don't know if its worth a read.

My money is still on an international moonbase,the cost will be enormous.

The European Space Agency's SMART-1 craft, currently orbiting the Moon, is expected to shed additional light on lunar topography. NASA plans a robotic reconnaissance effort in 2008 that would provide more information on polar illumination. Meanwhile, India's first mission to the Moon, planned for 2007, would pack a U.S.-made radar instrument designed to pin down the locations of water ice.



No private corp will have the money to pull it off.

The real breakthrough will come if/when corporations realize that there is a lot of money's worth of raw materials on the moon/Mars.
Then you will see space travel reduced to an operation as routine as offshore oil field operations.


BTW, some people are wondering what there is on the moon that is not here on earth.

Here are a few things:

Unclouded solar radiation
Helium-3
Low gravity
Easier access to interplanetary space

Update.


Hubble scans for Moon base locations.

Planetary scientists are using the Hubble Space Telescope to scout out sites for potential human bases on the Moon.

In particular, the team hopes to be able to identify a mineral called ilmenite - or iron titanium oxide - which has previously been found in lunar soil samples. "It has properties which would be useful in constructing a lunar base," Hapke told New Scientist.


http://www.newscientistspace.com/channel/h...-locations.html

I am convinced that lunar mining of aluminium, oxygen, titanium, silicon and iron will be competitive in the medium term with launching the same materials from Earth; the vacuum of space and abundant solar energy could allow methods of extraction not viable on Earth.

Some links
http://www.asi.org/adb/02/13/02/silicon-production.html
http://www.asi.org/adb/02/13/02/alu...production.html
http://www.asi.org/adb/04/03/10/04/...extraction.html
and
http://www.permanent.com/l-minera.htm
http://www.permanent.com/l-mining.htm

(all these methods of extraction are currently speculative of course)...

Eventually I would like to imagine that most of the spaceships built in the Earth-Moon region will be built on the Moon or in orbit from lunar materials and pressurised with lunar oxygen.
The exploration and perhaps colonisation of the rest of the solar system could depend on the Moon.

I think the economics of it all would be different on the moon. Obviously we'd have to put up a big array of solar panels.

Thanfully, not too much concern about cloudy days.