Firefly Aerospace lands on the moon

Hangontight said:
It’s cool to see that we’re going back to the moon. Hopefully this company comes to Oshkosh this year
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I was thinking about this last night. I gotta say, I don't think it's cool at all. We can never have meaningful settlements on the moon, so the enormous expense of sending people is just a waste of money. I suppose as a test bed for autonomous rovers destined for mars or more interesting moons around jupiter and saturn it might be 20% justifiable. But, really, seems like most of that could be done on earth.

Given that NASA's budget is always controversial and limited, I would rather see the funding used for other things.
 
Ah, the sadness of people without vision
 
Pretty cool.

With private companies doing the work, unlike a government agency, there are certain efficiencies that capitalism provides. Space X and Firefly are in it for the money, and there's the potential for a lot to be made if they can work out a way to bring back resources from wherever they go.

Even if they can't, just the R&D and resulting knowledge gained is huge.
 
172andyou said:
I was thinking about this last night. I gotta say, I don't think it's cool at all. We can never have meaningful settlements on the moon, so the enormous expense of sending people is just a waste of money. I suppose as a test bed for autonomous rovers destined for mars or more interesting moons around jupiter and saturn it might be 20% justifiable. But, really, seems like most of that could be done on earth.

Given that NASA's budget is always controversial and limited, I would rather see the funding used for other things.
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Low gravity and microgravity have potential implications for new and interesting manufacturing methods. Asteroid belts have considerable resources. The moon is likely to one day be the linchpin of our space activities. And yes, there's just the wonderfully human thing of doing something because it's awesome. All good reasons to celebrate this landing.
 
172andyou said:
I was thinking about this last night. I gotta say, I don't think it's cool at all. We can never have meaningful settlements on the moon, so the enormous expense of sending people is just a waste of money. I suppose as a test bed for autonomous rovers destined for mars or more interesting moons around jupiter and saturn it might be 20% justifiable. But, really, seems like most of that could be done on earth.

Given that NASA's budget is always controversial and limited, I would rather see the funding used for other things.
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I’m not sure we know of ANY other planet or moon where we could have “meaningful settlements”, so by that line of thinking, why go anywhere?
 
AvNavCom said:
Low gravity and microgravity have potential implications for new and interesting manufacturing methods. Asteroid belts have considerable resources. The moon is likely to one day be the linchpin of our space activities. And yes, there's just the wonderfully human thing of doing something because it's awesome. All good reasons to celebrate this landing.
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We can do low and no gravity stuff in orbit. No need to go to the moon for that. The moon will never be the linchpin because we can't put people there.

And for sure I'm not arguing to cancel moon stuff and not replace it. I'm arguing that since resources are scarce, lets spend them wisely and that's not the moon.

dans2992 said:
I’m not sure we know of ANY other planet or moon where we could have “meaningful settlements”, so by that line of thinking, why go anywhere?
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Not quite. I'm saying that the only reason to consider the moon is for settlements. Not to mention that NASA has a mandate to settle the moon. Since that can't be done, we should abandon that mandate and spend our limited resources elsewhere. I agree there is no place in the solar system that humans can inhabit. So, that being the case, it's way more interesting to explore pretty much anyplace than the moon.

All I'm saying is that we have a ten dollar budget and about two thousand dollars of cool stuff we could do. The moon isn't worth a penny.
 
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Lunar soil is a great media for building. Add in a matrix and you'll get something stronger than concrete or steel.

Being able to 'print' habitats is a technology that we have now with concrete and can be easily used and perfected on the moon.

I would 10000% support all the money going to Ukraine or Welfare to go to something like lunar settlements.
 
AV8R_87 said:
Why do you say that?
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Because moon dust is as toxic as asbestos and for the same reason. Due to the lack of atmosphere moon dust is sharp like glass and never gets worn smooth. It is impossible to be sufficiently clean to keep it out of the astronauts lungs. The apollo guys got mildly sick after just a few days of exposure. Long term exposure is a death sentence.

Mars dust isn't a sharp, but contains some nasty chemicals. The whole idea of human settlements in our solar system is basically a non-starter. And an expensive non-starter. Just like manned fighter jets should be abandoned because they are expensive and impractical, so should human spaceflight beyond earth orbit.
 
I'm sure a lot of people didn't see any good reason for Columbus to set sail across that big dangerous ocean, too.
 
I see it the same as the interminable question, "Why do people climb mountains?" (and they do this, often risking their lives)
Either you get it, or it's a foreign concept that you may never understand.
 
wanttaja said:
Check Heinlein's story, "Columbus Was A Dope."

Ron Wanttaja
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That echoes the words of a song written by Jack Clement (recorded by Johnny Cash) that had the lines:

"Another Columbia fellow
told queen Isabella
I don't think the world is flat
and now what do you think about that
And she said you don't
and he said no ma'am
And she said he'd get out of my queendom
and he said yes ma'am"

:eek:
 
172andyou said:
Because moon dust is as toxic as asbestos and for the same reason.
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172andyou said:
Long term exposure is a death sentence.
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#1 - see above
#2 - it's a lot easier to set-up a clean room airlock/decontamination facility on a permanent base than in something with less livable space than a family car.
#3 - space suits that remain outside (together with most of the dust) and are accessed through a hatch on the back, attached to the airlock, are a thing. This would make decontamination even easier, and those procedures are already well-established here on Earth.

If anything, the issue with a Moon or Mars base is radiation protection, since both lack a magnetosphere. But a dozen feet of rock provides really good shielding, so that would be where a permanent base would be, not in a dome on the surface.
 
Some people are perfectly happy staying in their little zone. No spirit of exploration, no spirit of discovery. Ok, so let them.

Perhaps an analogy is that there are some people that have zero interest in foreign travel. They are perfectly happy living in their local area. And some are even unable to grasp why anyone would go to another country. Ok, so let them.

But if we as species don't want to explore, don't want to discover what's out there beyond our own little tiny planet, well, then, we as a species deserve to go extinct.
 
AV8R_87 said:
#1 - see above
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So we know how asbestos damages the lungs
We know the apollo guys had damage in only a few days
We know that volcanic ash causes lung cancer
We know that experiments with lunar soil simulant caused damage

In short, we know that breathing sharp micro-particles is terrible for ones health. The moon is literally covered with small sharp particles.

AV8R_87 said:
#2 - it's a lot easier to set-up a clean room airlock/decontamination facility on a permanent base than in something with less livable space than a family car.
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The space shuttle made a single landing on a dry lake bed and, despite being much larger than a family car and a motivated NASA team cleaning it, it continued to spew dust into missions for the remaining 20 years it flew. And don't forget that somehow the permanent base had to be built to begin with. It's not going to be dropped from the sky as one unit. It will be exposed to the lunar dust during construction/assembly.

AV8R_87 said:
#3 - space suits that remain outside (together with most of the dust) and are accessed through a hatch on the back, attached to the airlock, are a thing. This would make decontamination even easier, and those procedures are already well-established here on Earth.
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Most of the dust. Sure.

AV8R_87 said:
If anything, the issue with a Moon or Mars base is radiation protection, since both lack a magnetosphere. But a dozen feet of rock provides really good shielding, so that would be where a permanent base would be, not in a dome on the surface.
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Radiation is another big concern. Correct. Both radiation and lunar dust are basically deal breakers for the moon. Radiation and toxic dust are deal breakers for mars.
 
The technologies in your computer and cellphone are direct descendants of the tech developed for the Apollo moon shots. It's debatable whether we would be as advanced without those NASA developments.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Well, he was. It was just dumb luck that the Caribbean islands were there.
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It certainly was. No one but peasants believed the Earth was flat back then. The diameter of the Earth had even been calculated a thousand years before.

Columbus, though, decided that the actual diameter was much smaller. He didn't have the supplies to sail the 10,000 miles to China. The fact that there was a huge continent in the way (with its associated islands) is the only thing that saved him.

To his dying day, Columbus believed he'd made it to the Indies. He WAS a dope....

Ron Wanttaja
 
172andyou said:
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A lot of speculation about macro-side effects based on some cell cultures in a petri dish.
Lungs generate mucus specifically to trap and expell foreign matter. Asbestos and silicates are indeed a special case, but even those can be dealt with with proper clean room practices.

172andyou said:
We know the apollo guys had damage in only a few days
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How many of them died of lung cancer?

172andyou said:
We know that volcanic ash causes lung cancer
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The big island of Hawaii is a cancer hotspot. So is Sicily. Oh wait, they aren't.

172andyou said:
We know that experiments with lunar soil simulant caused damage
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In a petri dish, at cell to simulant ratios that have not been mentioned.

172andyou said:
In short, we know that breathing sharp micro-particles is terrible for ones health. The moon is literally covered with small sharp particles.
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Same as here, when you grind stuff. You wear a respirator. Nobody walks barefoot on the moon. You get into a decontamination chamber after you go back in, and you wear a respirator.
Same as millions of people on Earth that work with hazardous substances, and they don't drop like flies.
It will require discipline to keep clean, but working in a vacuum requires a lot of discipline as well.
 
Dan Thomas said:
The technologies in your computer and cellphone are direct descendants of the tech developed for the Apollo moon shots. It's debatable whether we would be as advanced without those NASA developments.
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Well, that's the cover story.

I've heard the advancements were mostly driven by the agency with the similar acronym with one less "A": NSA, whose existence wasn't admitted for years. They needed really hot computers for decoding work. Though NASA did need 'em smaller.....

Ron Wanttaja
 
This reminds me of some dialog delivered by Tom Hanks about 25 years ago.

... The main requirement for making the fantasy a fact, perseverance; the wherewithal to solve the problems one by one over the long course of the endeavor ...
 
If not for the !@#$%^&*! Dark Ages, humankind would have spread through the solar system already.
Let's not make the mistake of keeping all our eggs in one basket. One asteroid, one super volcano, one massive solar flare, a nearby super nova, nuclear Armageddon, ...

The universe is a dangerous and indifferent place. There is a reason after 13 billion years the cosmos is NOT teeming with life.

If you don't believe humanity is worth saving, then get out of the way for the people who do. If all of us stay here, we're doomed.
 
Dan Thomas said:
An escape-proof penal colony?
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Well, it was tried with Australia but the convicts learned how to make boats. We better make sure they don't have the means to make their way back to Earth if we put the penal colony on the moon, lol.
 
Can’t imagine how long it would take Dominoes to deliver a pizza
 
Domenick said:
The universe is a dangerous and indifferent place. There is a reason after 13 billion years the cosmos is NOT teeming with life.
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I suspect it is... just not the part we can see in detail. And to paraphrase, life forms are dangerous and indifferent. There are probably very good reasons to keep us separated by great distances. We've been finding excuses and ways to kill each other since the dawn of time; imagine how bad that would get with species from other planets. Probably best we just stay apart.

GoFly said:
Can’t imagine how long it would take Dominoes to deliver a pizza
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It would be as bad as Uber Eats.
 
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