Author Topic: How Do We Draw People to the Moon?  (Read 8911 times)

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: How Do We Draw People to the Moon?
« Reply #20 on: 12/03/2017 11:46 pm »
Just wanted to insert my hobby horse of a "robotic lunar colony"
* NASA pays a fixed price to land commercially competed cargo on the moon every year.. say $0.25b.. not enough for HSF (yet).
* NASA pays nothing for payloads. Instead it hands out cargo space as prizes to the most promising ISRU projects.
* Universities and corporations do it for the prestige, and because the project advertises work they would be doing anyway.
* The worth of projects is decided in a panel where everyone gets input, and where projects that enable others get upvoted.

I think this would chug away at tiny cost, drawing together diverse lobbies who have a vested interest in promoting the prestige of this project, and finding ways to draw in public interest from different vectors. It is totally different from the government deciding on the project and handing a huge lump of cash to a corporation that has no vested interest in whether the project is worthwhile.

What does this have to do with drawing people to the moon? It would make landing on the moon routine and therefore safe. There could be plenty of infrastructure in place even if they got stuck there. At a certain scale it would be worth sending a couple of engineers just to clean grit out of cogs... but more importantly you are exploring not only the moon but hundreds of different avenues inspired by diverse people around the globe seeking to close the business case for their pet idea. Unless robots replace people altogether, industrialising the moon means people in large numbers. This is not so much an engine to draw people to the moon as an engine to find the answer to draw people to the moon.
« Last Edit: 12/03/2017 11:50 pm by KelvinZero »

Offline sanman

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Re: How Do We Draw People to the Moon?
« Reply #21 on: 12/04/2017 04:24 am »
The New York Times says a treaty offering a basic legal framework might be nice:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/26/science/moon-express-outer-space-treaty.html

Offline eric z

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Re: How Do We Draw People to the Moon?
« Reply #22 on: 12/11/2017 12:01 am »
 NASA Watch, and Marcia Smith say there will be a big Moon Announcement out of the Administration tomorrow, Monday.  Hope it's the Big One!

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