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Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by btkramer9 on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @12:32PM (#22536917)
The only thing going for the moon is its proximity to Earth. Mars has more than double the gravity of the moon, an atmosphere, nearly earth-like day night cycle and satellites have a much easier time orbiting mars
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by kjs3 on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @01:07PM (#22537253)
The only thing going for the moon is its proximity to Earth.

Oh...that's all. So let's ignore for just a second the logistical advantages of figuring out how to actually mount a manned mission to build something non-trivial on another body when you're 3 days away, not 6 months away. Pretend that isn't important.

The moon has water, raw materials, enough gravity things don't just float away, abundant solar and we've already figured out how to get people there and back. We already have an MVP to build on.

On the other hand, a manned Mars mission is still an un-funded wank-fantasy with a disturbingly high failure rate for the unmanned attempts.

Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by btkramer9 on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @01:17PM (#22537337)
I've mostly addressed this in the siblings comments. Mars has all the same resources and more. The way humans went from the moon's orbit to surface is so far off from how it would be done today I would hardly call it and MVP. Both are too far for any meaningful emergency response. I believe the ongoing work with starship debunks your claim of an "un-funded wank-fantasy". The moon also has a disturbingly high failure rate for the unmanned attempts.
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by magduf on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @03:51PM (#22538939)
You think 3 days is "too far for any meaningful emergency response"? I mean, yeah, if someone needs to be in an ICU within an hour, that's too long, but if they develop a new coronavirus on the Moon, 3 days to get people back to Earth is not bad.

By your logic, it seems like we should just give up on building any bases in this solar system altogether, and just start building a ship to go to Alpha Centauri.

Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by btkramer9 on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @11:31AM (#22546630)
I'm advocating to go directly to Mars and skip trying to figure out everything on the Moon first. The Moon is more difficult and has a lot less upsides.

Obviously 3 days is better than 6 months. A lot more can be done with a shorter window. I just don't think it justifies passing up all the upsides Mars has to offer

Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by magduf on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @01:04PM (#22547472)
I completely disagree about the Moon being more difficult. We can get to the Moon in 3 days flat. We cannot do that with Mars; to go there, humans have to spend months in space being exposed to hard radiation. With the Moon, that isn't a problem because 3 days cosmic radiation exposure isn't a big deal, as proven by our many landings on the Moon in the 60s-70s.

On top of that, the Moon has proven mineral resources which can be mined and refined on-site a lot easier than trying to do the same on Mars.

Mars is just too far away. If you're going to neglect distance, then we should just skip Mars and go straight to Alpha Centauri or some other star with a bunch of exoplanets.

Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by kjs3 on Monday March 23, 2020 @11:18PM (#22671548)
Spot on...I have to assume btkramer9 is just a obsessed Zubrin fanboi or so scifi obsessed there's no objectivity. I get that Kerbal Space Program let's a new generation of armchair celestial mechanics say "Delta V!" as though that's all that matters, but handwaving the basic logistics (simple things, like fuel and water) between a Moon and a Mars mission and trying to make them equivalent undertakings...that's some seriously delusional thinking.
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by ggffryuuj on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @02:45PM (#22538254)
The moon is just as much of an un-funded wank fantasy as mars... grow up dude
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by ryanmercer on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @02:08PM (#22537897)
Proximity matters a lot until you have sure-fire technology.

If you have a critical failure on the moon, you are home in 3-4 days being debriefed. If you have a critical failure on Mars, it could be 2 years until your remains can be recovered and respectfully laid to rest.

If you're testing a new technology and discover some serious flaw or major way to improve it and lack the materials to make an adjustment you could have that done and sent on the next trip in a week or a month or 3 months from Earth to the Moon. On Mars, you could be looking at 2+ years.

On the moon you have to deal with power over a 13.65 day night, at first this could be achieved by simply having human missions only there for 2 weeks ~ at a time until you get enough power generation there (say a small reactor) to provide sufficient power constnatly. On Mars you have to deal with a night comparable in length to Earth but you have considerably reduced solar irradiance meaning if you use PV it's always going to produce less during the day. This makes the Moon a better candidate for testing power management, battery technologies, small reactors, etc.

Any technology that can survive in the harsher conditions of the moon, will mostly work out of the box on Mars with the only real stuff needing custom-tailored being vehicles as the Martian and luanr regolith will vary enough (especially combined with the gravity differences) to require you to at least adjust suspensions and wheels.

Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by NortySpock on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @12:40PM (#22536983)
The moon has water ice in dark craters, as well as minable ore that contain aluminum, iron, silicon and oxygen. You will "just" need to use heavy mining and smelting gear to extract it.

Solar power and batteries should work assuming you're willing to build your base among the "peaks of [near] eternal light" which get sunshine nearly ninety percent of the time.

Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by LargoLasskhyfv on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @07:39PM (#22541243)
What needs to be "heavy" gear on the moon? I feel that our current understanding of operations in that environment mostly doesn't apply. Take smelting for example: during lunar day you can bundle several parabolic mirrors and smelt whatever you want. Just have to care about catching it, otherwise it evaporates away. ISTR https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=optical+mining is a common concept now.
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by btkramer9 on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @12:43PM (#22537018)
This is mostly true on Mars too except perhaps the eternal light part
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by CydeWeys on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @12:57PM (#22537152)
Mars has a lot more benefit here, in that it has a normal-length day. Much better to reliably have sunlight for roughly half of every day than to rely on a few polar areas that are in sunlight most of the time. The equator of the Moon is more suitable for other reasons, so what are you going to do, put the solar panels at the poles and run long power lines down to the equatorial regions where the power is used? Nah.

Mars is better for solar power because you won't need nearly as much battery capacity, as you get light on a ~24 hour cycle same as Earth. The Moon with its slow rotation is much more challenging.

Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by NortySpock on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @01:57PM (#22537782)
Plus Mars has an atmosphere (95% CO2, 3% Nitrogen, 2% Argon, 1% other at 1% of Earth atmospheric presure IIRC), which the Moon utterly lacks.

Compress that into a tank and you can chemically (or biologically) convert that into an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere to breathe.

Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by Someone on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @01:32PM (#22537483)
On the minus side, Mars gets less than half the amount of sunlight per square meter.
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by CydeWeys on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @02:39PM (#22538191)
That's true, but I think the fact that you get light reliably every day is still a big point in its favor. It's probably a lot less mass total to send up twice the solar panels and 18 hours' worth of batteries vs half the solar panels but 16 days' worth of batteries. Solar panels are pretty light; batteries are not.
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by theseadroid on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @12:36PM (#22536942)
And its proximity is probably the most important factor?
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by btkramer9 on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @12:47PM (#22537056)
I'm not so sure about that. It takes more delta-v to get to the moon than mars and both are still too far for immediate response to emergencies. Sure the moon has the advantage of emergency assistance of a few days (?) but I don't think that's more valuable than all of Mars's pros
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by jbattle on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @01:06PM (#22537240)
> It takes more delta-v to get to the moon than mars

Is that true? I can't see how that'd be true, unless maybe you are considering aerobraking to enter mars orbit and parachutes for landing on the surface (?)

Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by kjs3 on Monday March 23, 2020 @11:27PM (#22671581)
It's hyperselective framing the argument: bork bork Delta-V bork...and let's just ignore the 6 months of travel time and logistics difference as though that doesn't exist. Then I get to be right!
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by btkramer9 on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @01:12PM (#22537294)
yes with aerobreaking but I still believe that includes a propulsive landing after. The moon has no atmosphere so it has to be propulsive landing 100%
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by svaigsq on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @01:24PM (#22537410)
If Mars has atmosphere, then Moon has equally useless atmosphere, too. Despite differences in day length, Moon can gather more solar power, than Mars and energy is everything. Besides, those sattellites are gonna crash.
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by btkramer9 on Tuesday March 10, 2020 @01:35PM (#22537515)
I don't think your atmosphere comparison is valid. The moon has absolutely no atmosphere. Mars' is 1% of earth. That's still a lot of _something_. aerobraking, and easy access to unlimited CO2 is incredibly valuable. Delta-v to mars is less than the moon so the extra solar panels required is not that big of an issue. The moon will probably only be a research outpost because of its gravity and slow rotation. Mars on the other hand will most likely transition to nuclear eventually to sustain a city/colony and industry
Re:Saturn's largest moon may be the only place beyond Earth ... by jacobush on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @05:24AM (#22544318)
Ackshully Mars' atmosphere is famous for being rubbish for aerobraking but enough to burn you up.