The projected dates of 2023 and 2024 for a gateway station and landing are completely unachievable. I assume it's tied into boosterism for the reelection campaign: "Look at what we're going to do in our second term." It's sad that nobody in the media is calling them out on this.

Landing on the moon in 2024 is far less ridiculous a statement than Kennedy's moon announcement in 1961 was. We can do it, we just don't want to badly enough.

Manned spaceflight and stations are unnecessary in the near term. Autonomous drones and machines can bootstrap colonization. A mining refinery can be bootstrapped easily, all remotely. Then asteroid mining droids will drop their payloads there for refinement and processing.

> https://www.wired.com/2012/04/space-humans-vs-robots/

> If space exploration continues to focus on sending robots to other planets, "we will learn less about the solar system in the next 100 years than we will if we engage in an ambitious program of human exploration,"

In other words, sending humans could be more efficient use of funds. This is an old topic which was rehashed many times; some conclude that robot's advantage here is not real.

How near is your "near term" here?

We still pay hefty amounts of money to oil rig workers and underwater welders, even here on Earth. Robot telepresence has a long way to go before we can build an entire refinery in zero-G.

Agreed. The benchmark I use is I'll believe that robotic missions make human missions irrelevant, when the day comes that I can get a roomba that works across multiple floors, climbing stairs (and cleaning stairs), empties itself in the trash can, and avoids pet messes instead of dragging poop all over the floor.

Or a laundry system that grabs the basket of dirty laundry (or better yet, picks the close off the floor), washes, then transfers to the dryer, then irons and hangs up the clothes.

If machines can do all that effectively, then they can probably explore other planetary bodies as good as people.

If you were going to make a 100% robotic factory/refinery/etc. you would design it for robots. The problem with the Roomba is that houses are designed for people, not robots. A robotic factory could avoid a lot of problems by not needing to design for people.

While I disagree with your benchmark, I don't think we're going to be putting robotic factories in space in 3-4 years. Have we even built a 100% robotic factory on earth yet? Plus, I don't think that anyone has built an autonomous robot for zero-g yet (I'm not counting satellites and Canada-arm).

> Plus, I don't think that anyone has built an autonomous robot for zero-g yet (I'm not counting satellites and Canada-arm).

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/17/15981250/japan-space-came...

"Japan’s space agency has for the first time released photos and videos taken on the International Space Station by its resident robot drone..."

But that factory won't do any good unless it gets input, and can put its output somewhere. The input would supposedly be from the local regolith which has a lot of the same problems that the example roomba would face.

Now a factory on Mars that takes in sunlight and atmosphere, and fills a tank with rocket fuel, could be possible. But in that case I would call it a specialized machine, not a factory or a robot.

I don't think we have to go that far, though.

Humans operating a remote robot on the Moon is a feasible concept, but there's a lot of remaining work on telepresence to be done. Haptic feedback, VR, robotic finger dexterity.

Full autonomy isn't necessary with the Moon's time lag. It'll be required if you want to do the robotic factory approach on Mars or the asteroid belt or something.

A Roomba is consumer-grade technology, though. There's a whole different paradigm of manufacturing and production used for i.e. defence, space/aerospace, high-level particle physics at LLNL and so forth. Not really a good metric. Ever read about the National Reconnaissance Office?

I was using "Roomba" as an illustration device. I necessarily wouldn't expect that the technology I described would be available at a consumer price point, but many of those items on my list should be doable with the same technological (AI) advances needed to make off-planet robotics work well (especially ones that are more distance such as on Mars, which need to work more autonomously).

For example, the rovers on Mars, as much as they have accomplished, really haven't done much more in all the time they were there than humans did physically on the Moon 50 years ago.

Unfortunately, robots aren't even close to being smart enough and dexterous enough to carry out complex projects in entirety without the help of humans. We need massive, paradigm-shifting advancements before that can happen.

Private space companies see space tourism as a major source of revenue in the near term. So manned spaceflight and/or stations are necessities in the near term. Mining and colonization will follow, but we need to get the private sector up and running first.

manned space missions are necessary in order to advance manned spaceflight.

we need the experience from sending 5, 10, etc people there before we can send hundred or more.

we need much more data on the effects of longterm space travel. this kind of experience can not be bootstrapped.

bootstrapping colonization would be worthwhile if we were ready to build a viable colony in the next few decades. but i do not believe we are.

i believe we do not yet have enough data to know if long term space missions are even possible.

getting machines to mars is easy. but getting the experience necessary for human colonization alone will take several decades more before we are ready. we don't need that bootstrapping as much as we need the experience of human spaceflight in order to build a colony.

There was way more funding in the 1960s than there is now.

His comment literally states that it's possible but that we just don't want it enough. Not enough funding is the most direct manifestation of that.

Yes but funding in the 1960s was ridiculously large, because they wanted so hard to beat the Russians. (Maybe if this wasn't so, they would have built a much more robust architecture and slower, and we would have the first man on the Moon in the 80s and Moon cities by now.)

Human-rated probably not, but with SpaceX's rapid iteration strategy, if they leveraged what they're already doing with BFR they could probably get something that size on the moon by then. The fact that they have working rockets going to orbit, as well as a process that iteratively improves on their methods, its not totally unreasonable. Especially when compared to Blue Origin, who has yet to put a single rocket in orbit.

I'm not an expert, but it seems to me than other than a PR some of those dates are also set to provoke higher efficience and appease taxpayers. Once the project is underway and billions were spent it's much ahrder to back out.

I agree that there's a strong bit of re-electionism, but an Apollo 8-10 style mission is quite feasible in that timeline.

I'm not able to RTFA due to paywall, but I believe that the Lunar Gateway has already gone by the wayside for the first planned mission in 2024. I wouldn't be surprised if the completion date got pushed back a few more times and then it was canceled.

Boeing wants gateway gone because that reduces the threat of competition for SLS and its impending scope reduction or cancellation. Having a flexible platform outside a deep gravity well is more valuable than an expensive lunar landing system and promises of a permanent surface base.

No, they moved it up, to 2023.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/nasa-planning-to-lau...

When ever there is talk of mining The Moon, I think of the Moon mining scene in the movie Time Machine and it makes me mad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSs6eKmTCDY&feature=youtu.be...

Thanks for that. The Economist's paywall seems to be on every article now.

Who is racing? And why?

This just sounds like a lot of waste of money, when they won’t even bother to help people pay their rents.

Technology developed for space will benefit those living on Earth. This happened with the Apollo program and will continue with other programs.

We can and should do multiple things at once.

Yes, it's called Space Force and it's on Netflix. Can't wait.