Mar 23 2009
Why Go to the Moon?
This comes up a lot when people talk about space exploration - why go back to the moon? (For those that don’t think manned spaceflight is a worthwhile endeavor - as I do - you can see my reasoning here and here ) Why not skip the moon and go straight to Mars? What’s the value?
I’m here to tell you, I think it’s very valuable, very worthwhile, even essential. The moon is like a specially made test bed we can get our feet wet with, test our theories and our hardware, learn our lessons (even the hard way) before the really tough stuff happens. It has no atmosphere, no life. If we want to live on the moon, we’re going to have to make our own habitat, find our own opportunities, make the most of the forbidding landscape. If we want to conquer the moon, we’re going to have to deal with dust and temperature extremes and low gravity (which isn’t always a good thing) and meteors and radiation and everything else that is part and parcel of moving outside our magetosphere, going outside of earth’s orbit. We’re going to have to learn to recycle like never before and get blood (or something useful) from stone.
If we can beat the moon, we can beat Mars or any other planet or moon even marginally friendly.
And we’re lucky because we have the opportunity to do so within relatively easy reach of earth.
We can test engines on a smaller scale for a lander on the moon than we’ll need on Mars. We can address dust mitigation techniques on the Moon where resupply and rework is a relatively easy thing. We can figure out what upmass is REALLY required to make even a temporary home on another planetary surface before we commit to 3 year trip where there will be no rest stops along the way, no chance to recover if something we really needed, but didn’t know we needed, is safely on earth instead of with our Mars explorers.
Truth is, space exploration in orbit is a risky business, but we can get up there quickly if we need to. We can escape quickly if we need to. Someone gets a hot appendix on the Moon, we can get him back on earth before it’s too late. That beautiful sphere that lights the night sky has a thousand lessons on her we don’t have to learn on Mars where there’s no chance for rescue or resupply.
Should we go to the Moon? We’d be damn fools if we don’t. Believe me, in our lifetime, someone will walk her dusty hills again.
I completely agree–both on returning to the moon first (really, go all the way to Mars without even trying the moon? That seems thoroughly counterproductive if you consider the differences in the time it takes to get there), and on the importance of space exploration in general. I’ve got a friend who didn’t like the movie Apollo 13 because “they didn’t have to go into space and risk their lives, so why should we feel so caught up in the danger they’ve put themselves in?” which sort of made me lost for words.
I wish we would go to the moon again… if only because it’s such a foreign world for us. Seeing old film of the lunar landing is still surreal to me, for it shows so much of what our world isn’t. Sure, if Bear Grylls lands in Siberia, it’s forbidding in its own right, but he can still make it out of there and find civilization. But out on the moon, well, we really need to have our ducks in a row.
Besides, at what point do we realize that going a place one or two times doesn’t constitute KNOWING it. I learn something new every time I shop downtown Monroe, and I know if I visit Spain–when I visit Spain–again, I’ll learn more about it.
The moon may hold more mystery for me than any other heavenly body. But just because I can see its craters from my telescope doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve more.
I agree with all your logic behind the argument to return to the moon. I hope it happens in my lifetime.
I think the real power in a return visit to the moon is the hope and inspiration it can instill in us. A project of that scope and scale could really unite us and encourage us to strive to be better and smarter. We NEED to look beyond our world here and up to the stars, and we NEED to maintain perspective about our significance in the universe.
Think of what we could accomplish by uniting with our brethren in Russia, Europe, China and Japan. It was a very different world some 40 years ago when the space race was at it’s height, when we were suspicious of the Soviets and her Communist allies, Japan was still reeling from World War II, and other nations like India weren’t even in the technological picture yet. I can’t think of anything we have more in common with all the people in the world than the moon.
What would this mean to our children? I don’t hear about as many kids wanting to be an astronaut when they grow up. How wonderful would that be to look up at the moon with our kids and actually be on the path to knowing that we’ll be back and possibly colonizing it?
I think that would be just about the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.
I’m in agreement with both of you, shakespeare and oldwestmom.
And I see some foreshadowing because I was going to talk about a moon colony this evening.
I am reading a book called “Bad Astronomy” right now (watch for the review of it later in the week on my site) and in it, he talks about how people think that the moon landing was faked. What idiots.
Anyway, this book and of course your posts earlier this week have got me thinking about the moon and how difficult it really would be to put a permanent living station on the moon. I think we’ve all watched one too many sci-fi movies, and we have this idea in our head that space exploration is much easier (and we are much further advanced) than we really are. We watch people walk through stargates or get beamed around and we think, “Why aren’t we doing this in real life?” It’s like we’ve begun to actually believe all that Hollywood is telling us.
To want to go to Mars without first testing out our technology and ideas on the moon is nothing short of lunacy.
Great post as usual Stephanie. Thanks.
Havs