Going to the moon in 2024

[Great-Kazoo]

How am I supposed to become the moon's first solar salesperson then?

Perseverance and a very good sales pitch


I'd start by selling ice to eskimos. It's an already over saturated market, but you'll cut your teeth there. Plus it's easier to get home if you fail than being on the moon.

[BushMasterBoy]

I'd be happy if they had a high speed train from Pueblo to Colorado Springs and Denver. The drive is a bit nerve wracking.

[CS1983]

I think we should do more deep sea exploration We know very little about our own planet.

[Irving]

It bugs the ever loving crap out of me when I hear the phrase "We know more about the moon than we do about our oceans." I don't understand what that means?
If we listed all the things we know about our seas, and all the things we know about the moon, I'm confident that the list of things we know about the seas would be far, far longer. Anyone help me out with that?

[CS1983]

For one, we don't have to launch anything to the ocean floor. We just drop it. Two, there is a vast unexplored swath of the planet which might have some answers to questions or problems. Three, the potential for underwater dwelling has a lot of the same obstacles as other planets, so the ability to solve those problems "locally" before attempting elsewhere seems wise.

[Irving]

I don't accept the arguments of "We should do ______ instead." Why can't we do both?

[Martinjmpr]

I'm old enough to remember the excitement about the first Apollo missions, so I think this is a good thing. However where Apollo was a "let's do it to see if we can do it" type mission, I would hope a future mission would be more focused on what we can achieve that would benefit us in the future, too. Things like mining rare materials like Helium 3 that could potentially be used for energy production, other rare or esoteric materials that have potential to replace some of the minerals we use on earth, etc.

[CS1983]

I don't accept the arguments of "We should do ______ instead." Why can't we do both?

*shrug*

Personally, I don't think .gov should be involved in any of it and it should be left to private industry. But if "necessary", I don't see the problem with proofing concepts locally before moving on to other avenues of approach.

[Irving]

I'm not saying I disagree with exploring the oceans. Not at all. Also, I should clarify, you didn't say we should do that instead. One of the responses I saw on Twitter was "What about spending all those millions of dollars on cancer research?" Why not do both? I don't get it.

[Justin]

I'm super excited about the proposal for a manned return to the moon, and there are arguably a lot of really good reasons for doing so ranging from doing basic science, to market development, to national defense.

If we're ever going to look at spreading beyond Earth to other places like Mars, Ceres, the belt, or Bezos' proposed O'Neill colonies, then we will absolutely need to do a lot of basic learning, and the moon is the best place for doing so and it's imperative to establish the infrastructure for doing so.