The huge potential of helium-3 is for nuclear fusion. Yet we don’t have fusion reactors that use helium-3 and fusion is “20 years away”. We could get to mars before needing this is any quantity
Comment on As Moon interest heats up, two companies unveil plans for a lunar "harvester"
Jax@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks agoWhile I don’t like Musk, it’s actually never made sense to even attempt to go to Mars without taking advantage of the helium-3 stores on the Moon.
AA5B@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
mr_anny@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
We have lots of fusion reactors.
They just release years of energy in a split second.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
We could get to mars
why.
We need to add more to that $38T debt?
AA5B@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
NASA as a whole is a tiny fraction of the federal budget but has always generated outsized contributions to humanity. It’s an easy argument that money spent on nasa is money earned elsewhere. It’s a good investment
SpaceX has revolutionized space launches and I don’t believe that is government supported at all. It does fill government launch contracts but more cheaply than they could have done so themselves, and reliably enough to capture most of the world’s market. This does not add to the deficit and the early investments have been handsomely rewarded
Both SpaceX and blue origin, as well as other new generation space companies have been much much cheaper than old style projects. Just look at Artemis for example. Huge developments costs, continually More expensive, and $1B-$2B per launch. Yet I believe the total nasa funding for the entire starship program is around not like $2B. That is a very good use of our money
Jax@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Yes, but wouldn’t it become that much easier to achieve with an effectively limitless quantity of the resource?
AA5B@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t know whether that is currently a bottleneck or will be any time soon. I only know we’re “20 years away” from using it regularly, just like we have been my entire life
snooggums@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
Which is why a smart person would have started with the moon instead of saying in 2011 that he would put a man on Mars by 2021.
AA5B@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
In one hand, the moon is smarter because you can have Interaction and any change takes only a week or two. While we can’t harvest local resources, the cost to location is relatively low. You could even completely run out of food and still have everyone survive
We can’t afford to screw up anything to mars when there is no Interaction and it takes 18 months or more to make a change. Imagine if there’s a medical Emergency or the garden dies: 18 months is a really long time. Everything you send there is correspondingly more expensive and everything needs to much more stock in case anything goes wrong. There are many more possible issues to plan and prepare for. This will be especially expensive until we develop in-situ resource usage
And we don’t even know if people could survive that long
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
The whole Mars mission was stupid and a fantasy of scifi fans with grade 9 science. A colony, on a planet with no atmosphere and exteme temperatures, yet humans can’t handle the arctic.
AA5B@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
For sure it was over-hyped and jumping the gun on what’s possible. But if we ever do live off earth, mars is more likely than the moon
Mars is also an inspirational challenge - doing something that has never been possible. Going to the moon is something we already could to half a century ago. What’s the point of doing that again?
Assuming we do go to the moon, it had better be noticeably more than what we did 50 years ago. Personally I’m looking for a permanent moon station, similar to what ISS did for human presence in orbit
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
If we have colonies on Mars I can’t see why we also wouldn’t have colonies on the moon if only to support ships going further out into the solar system. Refuelling on the moon makes much more sense than refuelling on earth.
The only way that isn’t the case is if we build a space elevator to bring resources up to spacecraft orbit, but if we’re at that point I still think we would build colonies on the moon just because, even if it’s just at the level of a Saudi Arabian vanity project.
AA5B@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
For sure, any longer term presence outside orbit will hinge on finding resources. And i don’t think it even matters if we’re able to harvest helium-3 or something that might be worth bringing back, but to be able to use enough resources to make it affordable. Every pound lifted from earth to outside orbit will always be too expensive and local resources much much more affordable. While it starts with shelter and radiation shielding (ie live underground), we’ll need to generate bulk consumables like water, oxygen, fuel, and we’ll need to grow at least some of our own food
But we don’t even know if we can live on the moon. Microgravity has bad long term health effects such that we really don’t want to spend more than a year there. Does the moon have enough gravity to be substantially better?
If we do establish a larger off earth presence, we’ll have to compromise on enough gravity for long term health and livability vs as little gravity as necessary to keep space accessible
Jax@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I mean yeah, Musk is a fucking idiot that wants to retroactively prove the book he got his name from.
At least, that’s my headcanon.