Countries need to start giving away plots of moon land.

[Unwardil]

I'm going to use canada as a historical example here. Around the turn of the century, Canada, as an incentive to promote immigration literally gave away to anyone who cared to take it plots of land in the prairie regions. As a result, infrastructure and commerce rapidly grew as people settled the area.

Now, a lot of these farms failed and some people died, but at the same time, the country was colonized very VERY quickly and there was suddenly a good reason to create the transcontinental railway to connect everyone up to form a country out of the whole thing.

Now then, there's money to be made on the moon. This should be obvious to any sane person, for one thing, there's no atmosphere and the surface is exposed to constant sunlight. Can you say solar power generation? Set up manufacturing plants on the moon and you can literally power them for free off the sun, further more, the reduced gravity is going to make it a lot easier to deal with really big industrial things.

I'm not suggesting colonies here, I'm suggesting fully automated resource based industry. There's a number of companies who would stand to make an absolute killing under such an arrangement IF they could be allowed to get it going. It would be worth the risk on investing in it.

Why does this need to happen? Because it's the best way to get humanity off this death trap of a planet and start exploring the solar system and space in earnest. Are we seriously just now discussing how to put a man on mars? Why are we even still discussing this, it's not that hard. We know for absolute certainty that it is an achievable goal, there's just never been any better reason to try than to say that we've done it.

I hear so often that the earth is stretched far beyond it's resource support capacity and that may or may not be true. The problem is all the solutions that are tabled to deal with it are not solutions. Sustainability is not a solution for anything because life is not sustainable. If life was sustainable then we would be immortal. No, the answer is space exploration and ultimately the exploitation of resources from space and the colonization of space.

Give companies not only the ability but also the incentive to explore space for resources and I don't think the process will take very long at all because it only takes the success of one lucky venture capitalist before everyone will start jumping on the bandwagon.

Anyways, thoughts?

 

[RichardMNixon]

Is there currently anything preventing this? If Richard Branson decided to build a manufacturing plant on the moon, would anyone try to stop him? Getting out of atmosphere is still a pretty big deal.

It would also be bad if companies just flew up there willy-nilly and left debris orbiting everywhere in low atmosphere. We'd start having a real danger of collision any time we did leave.

 

[Unwardil]

Well, it's a bit more than just giving them the land, but also the rights to do with that land as they please. Sort of like gold prospecting, I'm basically advocating that countries and the U.N. even grant free development rights to land on the moon. Give companies free reign to do what they want, or, you know, make some guidelines like say 'No making doomsday weapons but mining for resources is A-ok.' There is no such legislation, in fact I'm certain it's quite illegal at the moment.

Remember, I'm not talking about manned space flight here, I'm talking about unmanned exploratory missions. You don't need much payload space for something like that and you don't need to launch from an equatorial vector either. Most of the payload space taken up for manned space flight has to do with actually transporting the human being and the necessary stuff to keep said human alive. Solar powered robots, especially those designed to work under lunar conditions don't take up anywhere near the payload. They'd be one way missions regardless at first and it's not like there wouldn't be the occasional accident, but that's the price you pay for getting stuff done quickly.

Efficiency isn't what's needed here, what's needed is incredible amounts of resources being devoted to solving a problem. The only reason to do that is if the potential pay-off is many many times greater than the risk. Now can you tell me that being among the first people to successfully start pulling resources off the moon isn't one of the most tantalizing business ventures you can imagine?

 

[Prolescum]

I don't think mining the moon is a particularly good idea, although mining the other planets in the solar system isn't such a bad one. If we use the example of companies which are currently responsible for mining, prospecting, drilling and the like, I have no confidence in their competence (or indeed their ethical considerations) at all. The planet is already pretty messed up, I'd rather the moon wasn't falling from the sky too.

 

[Unwardil]

See, the moon is absolutely critical, not for the resources that it may have which are honestly, probably quite limited in usefulness, but it is critical as a staging area, as the first non terrestrial location for people to sort of really get their feet wet in the cosmic ocean. It takes quite a lot of effort to blast something out of earth's atmosphere. 1G is quite a bit of force to overcome, but the moon's gravity is much weaker, plus, it doesn't have a tiresome atmosphere which is such a bother when designing space craft which also need to have aerodynamic properties.

Industry is simply the first step in colonization. Once there are facilities on the moon, there will be reason for people to actually move out and live there for months and years at a time and once that happens, you get a progressive snow ball effect. How many cities now exist where once there was nothing but a watermill and a cross roads?

The goal is not to increase the resources we have on earth, it's to provide a reason for people to move into space. That fact that it will very likely solve the problem of renewable energy sources and reduce the need for raw material mining on earth are just two happy bi products of that goal.

Once people are established on the moon, it will be much easier to build long range space craft because you won't have to launch them from earth. They could be built in lunar orbit, launching prefab materials from lunar based manufacturing facilities into lunar orbit via linear catapult, powered entirely by solar energy. Most of the really difficult design restrictions on space craft would no longer be an issue. You could just about build space ships out of rock if you made them big enough and there would be no limit to how big you could make the mother ship vessels, because they'd be built in space.

Think what the effect of micrometeorite impacts would be on a ship that had 1 km of solid rock between the space and the crew quarters. Absolutely none and it would be the easiest thing in the world to make, if you had a lunar based construction site.

 

[lrkun]

54.6- 401 Million Km from earth to mars depending on the situation.

http://www.universetoday.com/14841/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-to-mars/

4 months or 214 days. Depending on the method. It'll be interesting.

-oOo-

 

[Prolescum]

@ Unwardil

In principal, I agree that we should be out there, and I understand why a moonbase is preferable as a launchpad for further exploration etc, however, there are already rules governing what can and cannot be done. The basics are set out below.

http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/outerspt.html

the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind;

outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;

outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;

States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner;

the Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes;

astronauts shall be regarded as the envoys of mankind;

States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental activities;

States shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects;

and States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies.

I can't see many companies being able to adhere to these rules, let alone wanting to...

 

[lrkun]

@ Unwardil

In principal, I agree that we should be out there, and I understand why a moonbase is preferable as a launchpad for further exploration etc, however, there are already rules governing what can and cannot be done. The basics are set out below.

http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/outerspt.html

the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind;

outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;

outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;

States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner;

the Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes;

astronauts shall be regarded as the envoys of mankind;

States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental activities;

States shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects;

and States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies.

I can't see many companies being able to adhere to these rules, let alone wanting to...

Hehe, it's no fun that you pulled the common heritage of mankind principle.

 

[Unwardil]

Yes, what I'm saying is that document is both out of date and harmful to the progress of humanity. It needs to be re written in order to encourage private enterprise to start the process of space colonization.

 

[lrkun]

Yes, what I'm saying is that document is both out of date and harmful to the progress of humanity. It needs to be re written in order to encourage private enterprise to start the process of space colonization.

I think it's better if it's an international enterprise (world project) rather than private. I like that law, I agree with it. It is neither harmful, nor detrimental to society. However, do you mean to say that one should be allowed to have ownership of a part of the moon? That would cause war, I think. Of course that's just my opinion. Nevertheless, could you be more specific?

 

[Prolescum]

Yes, what I'm saying is that document is both out of date and harmful to the progress of humanity. It needs to be re written in order to encourage private enterprise to start the process of space colonization.

I'm not as enamoured by private enterprise as you seemingly are, and I'm pretty certain I'm not alone. There's certainly no consensus on how to proceed, but rewriting it to benefit private enterprise is probably the worst thing we could do from my point of view. That's not to say they don't have a place, however.

I agree with LRkun, the outer space treaty isn't harmful or detrimental, it's principled. I'm one of those people who think we are all one people and will, eventually, outgrow profit as the prime motivation for everything. Star Trek has a lot to answer for

 

[Unwardil]

Of course it would eventually cause war, but it would be war in space... On the moon and probably fought entirely with robots anyway, we wouldn't be talking about a massive loss of life here but again, it's like we're afraid of building a chicken farm simply because we're afraid that some eggs would get broken. There will be great financial and personal risk involved no matter WHO is in charge of doing this, but it's going to have to be done by someone.

A multilateral agency will get it done at the speed of government, which probably means not at all.

A totally piratical, unethical and hell, I'll go there, out right criminal multinational corporation will get it done at the speed of share holder which means as fast as they can legally get away with. What I'm saying is better to make sure it gets done at all, we can worry about getting it done right at a later date. By the time we get around to colonizing other star systems, then we can worry about getting it done 'right' for now lets just git 'er done.

You want to talk about space being without borders? Well most multinationals are already at that stage. They have offices in many different countries. I'll go one further, when you give people moon land, let them set up their own private governments with full control over their own sovereignty. The only way it will even become an issue is if someone puts enough resources into developing this country into something other than a barren plot of moon land and THEN you can start to worry about moral implications cause you'll actually have a THING there.

First you make the thing a reality, then you worry about how the morals work.

It's like developing a faster than light treaty, restricting faster than light travel within the solar system to prevent accidentally destroying a small moon in an accident or something. That's great, but first, SHOW ME THE SHIP THAT CAN GO FASTER THAN LIGHT!

 

[Netheralian]

@ Unwardil

In principal, I agree that we should be out there, and I understand why a moonbase is preferable as a launchpad for further exploration etc, however, there are already rules governing what can and cannot be done. The basics are set out below.

http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/SpaceLaw/outerspt.html
...

There is also the Moon Treaty. Except, nobody of importance ratified it so its a little pointless.