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TheHeretic -> RE: newt Moon-beam want to go to the moon again.....and..... (2/3/2012 11:10:19 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DomKen
Do you know the cost estimates of going to the moon and building a permanent colony?
Heavy launch vehicle capable of reaching LEO - 25 billion.
Permanent lunar base -35 billion
What private entity has 60 billion dollars to invest in a 10 year at least project with very little chance of turning a profit (it will take decades to prospect the moon for materials worth harvesting and shipping back to Earth so that would require additional billions and an even longer wait for payday).
quote:
I'm asking a question that shows the flaw in your thinking, andyour whole philosophy actually, and you dodge it. How utterly unsurprising.
Alrighty then. Dinner, drink, very nice sex, and little taste of back medicine later, let us address this.
First off, 60 billion. Let's say it's a reasonable estimate. That really isn't all that much anymore (more than either of us have, Ken, but we ain't special). From what I was hearing this morning on the radio coverage of the Facebook IPO, Zuckerberg is worth a nice piece of that, all by himself, and he doesn't look like he'd be too hard to mug. The last guesstimate I saw on California's high speed rail plan was 99 billion.
And who says it has to be a single private entity? There are three major partners, just in the StratoLaunch project. How many more would partner for a lunar construction project? How many people who read Asimov and Heinlein, before going on to make some serious money in their lives would be willing to take some crazy risk on a dream. Hell, I'm young enough. I'd put a chunk of my Social Security account into it, if I had the option. If we have the desire and will, the money can be rounded up.
I get the impression you are seeing this as a project of singular industry, perhaps along the lines of what BP had going in South Park's "Coon" trilogy. I'm thinking along the lines of a venture capitalist enterprise. Industrial outfits can buy in early, and get some build to suit going on, but the base/s are going to be sectioned off, and maybe on a time-share plan.
You aren't undermining my philosophy, Ken, you are demonstrating the rigid authoritarian outlook of your own, by assuming there must be a singular powerful entity of complete control from the beginning, rather than a collaborative effort which can evolve into the structure required.
Did you check out the Google Lunar X Prize in the link I posted? How much of the exploration and surveying can be accomplished by independent operators of such machines?
The returns are not all off somewhere over the rainbow. Rich people are going to be shelling out large bucks to fuck in zero-g, with the ultimate view out the SpaceShip2 porthole, before this decade is half over. Private facilities in orbit won't be far behind. Now a giant, single use rocket that goes straight to the moon is just wasteful, but a staged system of airborne launched rockets to orbit, and further assembly and launch from there, is going to create returns from the day it becomes operational. There is no reason for the company that does the launching, to be the company that builds the first outpost, much less be the company that goes after the resources when the thing is operational.
Despite an earlier offort on the thread to pigeonhole the ideas I'm talking about into a simpleton's "government baa-aaad," paradigm, government will have an important role to play. After all, there are some things that can't be done any other way. We need NASA's ability to track what is floating loose up there, and a system of laws to address what happens when project whatever's's dropped wrench takes out a Kardashian's joyride, for example. Of course, I mentioned the importance of regulatory assistance when I first entered the thread.
Does that about cover your question, Ken? I hope so, because Angry Birds Rio has updated, and I've been jonesing for some new levels.
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