why go to the moon?

why go to the moon?

Brint Montgomery thinks that going to the moon is a bad idea. He has three complaints:

The first compaint I have is this: it's really expensive. I'm all for going to space and doing exploration, but the kind of money it takes to land people, or even just craft on the moon seems better spent on robotic exploration to other places.

Darn right going to the moon is expensive - NASA is planning on spending $104 billion to develop a heavy-lift launch vehicle and a second vehicle to launch crew members. If you're going to send people to ... well, anywhere in space at all ... then going about it the way that NASA does is not going to be done economically. If there is no return on investment, then there can be no economic justification for spending any money on the venture at all.

Ronald Greeley, a Galileo imaging team scientist and a geologist at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. recently said, "We're seeing evidence of a lot of geological activity on Europa." Try finding a statement like that for the Moon! Geologically speaking, it's just a really boring place. Thus, our efforts at exploration should be refocused on what's most likely to give interesting science.

The lack of geological activity on the moon (although there is a bit, instruments left behind by Apollo astronauts found evidence of moonquakes) can be an advantage. It all depends on what the goal of visiting the moon is in the first place; more on that later.

The third complaint I have regards the possibility for finding life. The moon is a dead place. But there are other, accessable places where there might be life.

Again, this gets back to asking why people should go to the moon in the first place. If the intent is to find life, then the moon is obviously the wrong target.

However, looking for geological processes or life are not the justifications for going to the moon. Lets look at some other reasons.

First, the lack of erosion, plate tectonics, and other major geological activity can be an advantage. The moon's surface is pockmarked with craters from the impacts of asteroids and comets. Such impact zones have huge economic potential: just ask anyone living in the nickel belt of Ontario, Canada, the site of an ancient impact here on earth and currently the supplier of much of the world's nickel. Every crater has the potential to be a major supply of raw materials such as platinum-group metals, nickel, iron, and other metals. Furthermore, the moon's surface is constantly being bombarded by the solar wind. This solar wind brings with it something the Russians are very interested in: Helium-3, which will be fed to nuclear fusion power plants. With no erosion or major geological processes, all of that valuable material lays exposed on the surface, just waiting to be strip-mined.

The moon isn't just covered with craters, however; there are some very interesting features, such as Diamondback Rille (which I talked about in a recent blog entry), and the permanently-shadowed craters near the poles (and the associated peaks of eternal light along the rims of Peary crater at the lunar north pole and Shackleton crater at the lunar south pole).

The far side of the moon has a property which makes it potentially valuable to radio astronomers. The moon is tidally locked with the earth, so that face never points towards the earth. Any radio telescopes located on the far side of the moon would be permanently blocked from radio interference caused by transmissions from the earth.

I think Montgomery has fallen into a trap, a way of thinking about activity in space which NASA is only too happy to encourage: that the only justification for going into space is to explore, and that only a government agency such as NASA may do so.

As I mentioned above, mining the moon is one other possible purpose. But let's just suppose for a moment that we take mining out of the equation, and geology at the permanently-shadowed craters near the poles, and radio astronomy on the far side of the moon, and indeed anything that private industry might propose to do. Let's suppose that the only purpose in going into space is exploration.

If we only seek to explore, then sure, we can send robots to do the job. The question becomes: why explore anywhere in the solar system at all? What would be the point, unless the plan is for humans to follow?

If we don't plan on having human beings to go to the moon or Mars or Ceres or Vesta or Callisto or Europa, then why bother looking at these places up close at all? What good does it do to know that there is a huge supply of - for instance - Platinum on the moon, if we don't go and get it?

We explore these extraterrestrial bodies not simply to explore for exploration's sake. We explore them with the knowledge that we are doing so for a purpose. That purpose is the eventual migration of human beings away from the earth, to spread ourselves around the solar system. This could actually happen if private industry takes the lead in space operations - and will never happen if it is left to NASA to perform only the most tentative baby steps decade after decade after decade, all the while sucking up tens of billions of dollars every year.

However, the "giggle factor" that has in the past been a major obstacle to private space businesses is slowly fading away. Every success for companies like Scaled Composites and SpaceX, and others, would reduce the giggle factor further. It is this giggle factor that NASA seeks to encourage, so that they may maintain their monopoly on space operations in America.

In fact, after NASA spends its $104 billion (actually, add another 50% for the inevitable cost overruns), they will have likely produced nothing, or nothing better than Apollo. They might, at best, launch a few people three or four times, and then sit back and do nothing more beyond earth orbit for another 35 years.

In contrast, expect private space businesses to open up the first permanent bases on the moon (as opposed to the temporary ones proposed by NASA), to open up a lunar resort, to begin mining operations, and to begin permanent settlement of the moon. Private business can only do that which makes a profit, so even if it is expensive to start, in the long run private industry will make a profit. Those private businesses that cannot will eventually have go bankrupt or step aside for those that can make a profit.

In the course of living on the moon in the long term, people will learn the things that are necessary to learn in order to live anywhere. Lessons learned on the moon will apply to living on an asteroid, or on Mars, or indeed anywhere in the solar system. And it is those lessons that will enable humanity to spread throughout the solar system.

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