The US does not currently have enough money to set up a permanent moon base by 2020
February 12th, 2012 Posted in Mitt Romney
As of February 12, 2012 our debt per taxpayer is $135,000.
It would be too expensive to build a moon base by 2020
Reasons to agree:
- John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University and founder of the school’s Space Policy Institute says a moon base today could cost somewhere between $250 billion to $500 billion. However he does not show us any of his math, and his moon base was not as ambitious as Newt’s plan. Newt’s plan calls for a moon colony of 13,000.
- John Derbyshire says the following: “The cost of the Apollo program, which put twelve men on the Moon for a few days each, was 170 billion in 2005 dollars, according to NASA. Allowing for seven years’ worth of inflation, let’s round to $200 billion, say $16 billion per astronaut. Newt’s plan calls for a moon colony of 13,000, so we’re looking at a price tag of $200 trillion or so.That’s very rough and ready, of course. There would be economies of scale. On the other hand, there’d be huge things to be done — building living quarters, supplying colony-scale food and air, and so on — that Apollo didn’t have to think about. Still, let’s be optimistic and suppose the project could come in at 100 trillion dollars, say eight billion per colonist.” It would be great to go to the moon, if we had the money. We don’t. We shouldn’t.
We don’t have enough money to make our current obligations
Reasons to agree:
- As of February 12, 2012 we have a national debt of 15 trillion and 343 billion dollars.
- As of February 12, 2012 our debt per taxpayer is $135,000.
We don’t have the money to build a safe moon base by 2020
Reasons to agree
- We don’t have enough money to make our current obligations. (Idea score: +2)
- It would be too expensive to build a moon base by 2020. (Idea score: +2)
- We have to prioritize things we would like to spend our money on.
- We really have to prioritize things we are willing to go into more debt to pay for. Money is not infinite. Money does not grow on trees. When you borrow money, you have to pay interest.
- There are many things that we should fund before we build a permanent space colony on the moon.
- A moon colony would be nice, but we should wait until technology
There are many technological problems we need to figure out before we commit to building a self sustainable moon colony
Reasons to agree:
- Power
- The long lunar night would impede reliance on solar power. A moon day is 708 hours, or 59 days. This means you each moon night would last 29 days. We don’t have batteries that could last 29 days.
- A nuclear reactor on the surface of the moon would be prone to damage.
- It would be very difficult to bury a nuclear reactor under the surface of the moon, as there are currently no backhoes on the moon, no gas to run a backhoe, and no dealerships to repair a broken backhoes. Any other heavy equipment necessary to build living quarters, dig into the moon’s crust, extract, or refine metals, would be to heavy to transport into space.
- Sure, launching rockets from the moon is easier than earth, because its gravity is 1/6th that of earth, but there are no spare rockets just sitting around on the moon. It would take way more energy to send a rocket from here, slow it down and land it on the moon, and then shoot it off to the mars again. Until we have industrialized the moon so much that we are capable of building a rocket on the moon, it doesn’t make any to talk about the advantage of shooting rockets from the moon, because it would obviously be easier to go straight to mars, instead of going to the moon, landing, and then building up the momentum needed to get to Mars.
- Temperature
- A Newt moon colony would have to withstand large temperature extremes. The lack of a substantial atmosphere for insulation results in temperature extremes and makes the Moon’s surface conditions somewhat like a deep space vacuum. During the day (about 354 hours) the moon has an average temperature of about 107 °C (225 °F). However it can rise as high as 123 °C (253 °F). The night period (also 354 hours) has an average temperature of about −153 °C (−243 °F).
- Because robots can deal better with cold temperate, why not send more of them to the moon before we send people?
- Gravity
- Low (one-sixth g) gravity on the Moon is not strong enough to prevent detrimental effects to human health in the long term. Muscles and bones weaken if they are not used. Exposure to weightlessness over month-long periods has been demonstrated to cause deterioration of physiological systems, such as loss of bone and muscle mass and a depressed immune system.
- Because robots can deal better with low gravity, why not send more of them to the moon before we send people?
- Radiation
- It also leaves the Lunar surface exposed to radiation raising the issues of the health threat from cosmic rays and the risk of proton exposure from the solar wind. Shielding against solar flares during expeditions would be problematic.
- Because robots can deal better with readiation, why not send more of them to the moon before we send people?
- Plasma Sheets
- When the moon passes through the magnetotail of the earth, the plasma sheet whips across its surface. Electrons crash into the moon and are released again by UV photons on the day side but build up voltages on the dark side. This causes a negative charge build up from −200 V to −1,000 V. 1,000 volts is more than enough to kill you. 120V, and 240V in your house can kill you. 1kV would be much worse. Not to speak of what this would do to electronics…
- Meteors
- The lack of an atmosphere increases the chances of the colonial site being hit by meteors, which would impact upon the surface directly, as they have done throughout the Moon’s history. Even small pebbles and dust (micrometeoroids) have the potential to damage or destroy insufficiently protected structures.
- Moon Dust
- Moon dust is an extremely abrasive glassy substance formed by micrometeorites and unrounded due to the lack of weathering. It sticks to everything and can damage equipment, and it may be toxic. (Lunar explorers face moon dust dilemma”. msnbc.com. Retrieved 2008-02-16, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15607792/))
- Because robots can deal better with toxic moon dust, why not send more of them to the moon before we send people?
- Food
- Growing crops on the Moon faces many difficult challenges due to the long lunar night (354 hours), extreme variation in surface temperature, exposure to solar flares, nitrogen-poor soil, and lack of insects for pollination. Due to the lack of any atmosphere on the Moon, plants would need to be grown in sealed chambers. The use of electric lighting to compensate for the 354-hour night might be difficult: a single acre of plants on Earth enjoys a peak 4 megawatts of sunlight power at noon.
- Because robots don’t need food, why not send more of them to the moon before we send people?
- One of the less obvious difficulties lies not with the Moon itself but rather with the political and national interests of the nations engaged in colonization. Assuming that colonization efforts were able to overcome the difficulties outlined above - there would likely be issues regarding the rights of nations and their colonies to exploit resources on the lunar surface, to stake territorial claims and other issues of sovereignty which would have to be agreed upon before one or more nations established a permanent presence on the moon. The ongoing negotiations and debate regarding the Antarctic is a good case study for prospective lunar colonization efforts in that it highlights the numerous pitfalls of developing/inhabiting a location that is subject to the claims of more than one sovereign nation.
- Carbon, Nitrogen, and Hydrogen
- The Moon is highly depleted in important light elements (volatiles), such as carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen. No sufficient means exists for recovering these volatiles on the Moon. These elements would need to be imported from some other source to support life and industrial processes. Also, volatiles would need to be stringently recycled. This would limit the colony’s rate of growth and keep it dependent on Earth. Also the technology does not currently exist for importing volatiles from other parts of the solar system.
We should wait to go to the moon for technology to advance
Reasons to agree:
- Solar panel technology, which you would need on the moon, continues to advance.
- Battery technology, which you would need on the moon, continues to advance.
- Lightweight computer technology, which you would need on the moon, continues to advance.
- Material Science technology continues to advance.
- Low cost rocket technology, which you would need to get to the moon, continues to advance.
- There are many things that we should fund before we build a permanent space colony on the moon
- It would be too expensive to build a moon base by 2020. We don’t have enough money to make our current obligations
- We don’t have the money to build a safe moon base by 2020
- An assignment to a moon colony built by 2020 would be a death sentence
- There are many technological problems we need to figure out before we commit to building a self sustainable moon colony
- Fuel sell technology, which would be needed on the moon, continues to advance.
- Proton Exchange Membrane cells have not yet been tested in space.
- Algae-based gas exchanger technology is still advancing, which would be needed for life support.
There are many things that we should fund before we build a permanent space colony on the moon
Reasons to agree:
- We should pay off our debt before we go to the moon.
- We should fix poverty before we build a colony on the moon.
- We should fix global warming before we build a colony on the moon.
- We should ensure freedom of the press everyone on the planet before we colonize the moon.
- We should colonize the ocean before we colonize the moon.
- We should colonize death valley before we colonize the moon.
- We should re-colonize Detroit before we colonize the moon.
- A moon colony would inspire our kids kids to daydream a little bit. Interest in further exploration of the Moon was beginning to wane among the American public in the 1970s, but it would go up a bit if we said we were going to build a permanent moon base. But kids would all be daydreaming from a bleak world of poverty. The reality of trying to build a permanent colony of 13,000 people before 2020 would bankrupt our kids future.