I'm interested in learning more about your perspective that there's no science left to be done on the moon.

Do you think establishing a human base on the moon has value?

Maybe it was unclear, I meant, tautologically and just for emphasis, that the science that was done for the previous mission was (of course) done.

> Now, that science is done.

That said, building a base on the moon is pretty pointless, and I think we shouldn’t do it. If we’re going to become a spacefaring species, we’re going to have to learn how to live in space. The conditions on each planet, moon, whatever, are all pretty different, so we’ll probably need different bespoke solutions on each one.

We should perfect the art of building self-sustaining orbital habitats, because those aren’t redesigned from scratch every time. Let’s iterate on the space-station.

Energetically going downwell is a big cost. The only reason to go onto a planet is to get resources that aren’t already present in less energetically disadvantageous locations.

There are a lot of great benefits to planets, protection from radiation and meteors being among them, also a free source of gravity which is pretty important to us as a species.

It is a free source of, like, some amount of gravity. But we don’t know how our biology will respond to the wrong amount. Meanwhile an orbital habitat can be spun to get us the right amount.

In order to get to a planet in the first place, you’ll have to have a ship that can fly through space without the occupants getting irradiated. The biggest problem will be convincing them to get off the ship I think.

You're right, we may have to find out how the British, French, and Spanish convinced people to get off the ships during the colonial eras.

In the colonial era they were mostly colonizing already populated areas. The land was mostly more hospitable than the ship because

* Humans evolved to live on Earth

* In many cases there were people to trade with or steal already tended land from

We could look at Arctic expeditions I guess. They mostly didn’t colonize for some reason (despite the region being wildly more hospitable than anywhere off Earth).

I think we can both agree that the reality is any sort of off-world colonization is going to be unpleasant and difficult beyond imagine with no simple solutions. I think we are much closer to being able to construct conformable habitats on other celestial bodies than we are to being able to make megastructures in outer space. Long term artificial structures will probably be the way to go, but I think to get there we will need to be able to setup base camps on nearby celestial bodies.

The moon gives no protection from radiation or meteors.

Sending mass from the moon to earth is energetically positive and you can build mass drivers and space elevators on the moon that are only powered by electricity. So assuming an ambitious space program, there is every reason to do this, except that it costs money.

I went for a brief swim in the ocean once and having not seen any fish I concluded that the ocean must be devoid of life.

Elaborated here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41570028

Colonizing the moon makes as much sense as swimming out to a rock a bunch of times, to prepare for piloting a cargo ship.

Because when we do science on earth we go to a place once take only a few samples and that's it. And then maybe every 10-20 years we might take another sample or something.

We have less data about the moon then any even half way interesting cave on earth.

The post I was responding to was arguing for using low-tech systems and lots of power to get to the Moon again.

We know, and they knew at the time, that the achievement of getting to the Moon was just a cherry on top of the technological development required to do it.

Should not redo that work. The current strategy of using higher-tech components and less brute force is more scientifically interesting.

I also think going back to the moon is stupid, but I elaborated on that a bunch the other branch, so I’m not going to bother doing it again. But if we have to go back again, we should follow their spirit rather than their actions and use the most advanced systems available. Not a bunch of TTLs. The value is in testing our ability to manufacture complex devices to work in a hostile environment.

We could easily send a bunch of low cost probes to the Moon to collect more data. We can even get samples back robotically - China did that earlier this year.

There's no need to spend billions on spending three or four people there to get scientific returns.

Building a architecture to sustainably send human places will also enable a lot of other things. Having a 100 ton lander allows you to send far more then tiny probes. And we know well that actual humans exploring and looking for samples is better in many ways.

Getting humans to have long term sustainability and mobility on the moon and having tools and robotic support is long term.

The same architecture can then be reused for Mars.

On earth, most caves are explored with humans. Most science is not done by robotics only.