Lunar Water Discovery Announced

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by oddjob

In the 60s/70s it made sense to go to the moon because it hadn't been done before and we weren't sure what we'd find. Besides, we couldn't let the Soviets do it first.

A great next step would be to establish a moon base, but it still needs to have a purpose more than "hey, it's there, let's do it". Perhaps it becomes the launching pad for a Mars mission, but the scale of that effort would seem to be just too massive to move it to the moon. At a minimum, we need to solve the extended exposure to radiation problem on long space travel, and where to get the fuel to launch off of Mars surface which has 38% of earths surface gravity. A lunar module isn't going to get astronauts off of Mars, it's going to take a lot more thrust than that. Darn it, I really want to see a real effort to get to and from Mars surface. The moon is a dud by comparison.

Have you read Zubrin's "The Case for Mars"? It's obviously pretty biased for Martian exploration, but it does a fantastic job of including lots of technical goodies while maintaining readability. Notably, at least according to Zubrin, as long as there is no solar flare while in transit, the radiation is not a huge problem for a 1.5 year expedition (time between leaving and returning to Earth).

Also, in-situ propellant manufacturing is really neat. Essentially, Mars has lots of CO2. O2 and CH4 make pretty good rocket fuel. If you bring the LH2 with you (which is nice and light) and "mine" the heavy stuff from the Martian atmosphere, it becomes significantly cheaper to launch/land. I'd love to see a lander just to test the concept, but I doubt Congress would be willing to lay down the cash for a proof of concept rover.