50th anniversary of man planting flag on the moon.

[Sugarphreak]

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[ZenOps]

Mars has no immediate (generationally speaking) benefit. The moon however, is a perfect spy satellite that never needs re-fueling to stay in orbit. Geostationary satellites only last about 12 years before they run out of fuel to stay "in box", but if you establish a nuclear moon base - you gain "high ground" on the earth - forever.

There is much to learn about the earth from the perspective of the moon. Half of the earth only being understood for a few hundred years.

Realistically for every 1 million kilograms of fuel, you get 1,000 kilograms of "landable" payload into space. The outlier of course being the Apollo moon missions, where the math is just - well - whatever that math is. The moon is 1/6ths earths gravity, and you need even more of an insane amount of lower quality fuel (no oxygen atmosphere) to takeoff again.

Mars is without question, a one way trip. To takeoff from mars (which might be impossible because of low oxygen atmosphere type and gravity similar to earth) would take probably closer to 3 to 10 million kilograms of fuel for a 1,000 kilogram space vehicle to return to earth. That's not counting any other factors. Oxygen is a huge advantage when launching space vehicles.

BTW: The argument that the moon would make a terrible nuke silo: Beresheet took 40 days to get to the moon. Even at Mach 22, its going to take a week for any nukes launched off the moon to get to the earth (not counting the fact you have to slow it down to mach 2 for re-entry or it will simply disintegrate as it smacks into the atmosphere) I don't think this generation have adequate understanding of the logistics of such things. Many post secondary instituitions would rather have "dreamers" than "do-ers", and it shows.

https://www.space.com/india-moon-mis...slow-trip.html

A 27 kilogram moon rover is no doubt a massive achievement, as long as we stay within the realm of reality.

[ZenOps]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandr...#Pragyan_rover

As for the rover, since it does not have nuclear heating - it will definitely only last two weeks before freezing solid (the tempuratures the moon gets to will destroy all chemical battery formulations known to man) It is designed to travel 500 meters on the surface before kicking the bucket.

Assuming that it does not also smash into the moon at bullet+ speeds.

Reality people, reality.

[ZenOps]

BTW: I've always surmised it is possible to keep a machine alive on the moon for more than two weeks.

If you know exactly how far a rover can move in a week, you can "chuck" a puck of radioactive material that distance and in the direction you want to move. As nighttime approaches on moon, your rover approaches and then scoops up the puck and tucks it close to the center of the rover, heating it to at least -50 Celsius allowing to wake up when dawn hits, and then chuck the puck for another day.

This can be done with machines because of course they are mostly radioactive immune. Could it be used to keep a fruit fly alive? As long as the decay is not a gamma decay - maybe?

Of course this is all very far off - for most nations it is going to be rough to simply not smash vehicles into the moon.

Even further off, its also possible to rail-gun launch nuclear heating 0.5 Kilogram pucks (nickel plated from earth) to travel at mach 0.2 toward the moon. They can either be captured by an orbiting satellite several months to a year later when it arrives at the moon, or simply allowed to smash into the moon at random places which can then be used as "landing sites with campfires". Because surviving a lunar night will be the ultimate challenge to keep any machinery alive. I mean: If you railgun 20 pucks to the moon (from earth or even from an moon orbital launcher) then at least one of them will land in a crater that would be a suitable crater for exploration. And then it would be possible to explore that area for as long as the puck and rover stay warm instead of the craptacular 2 weeks that they all are designed for otherwise.

Rail gunning a radioactive puck would cost well under $100,000 per shot (assuming China will do this first, USA easily 10x as much in dollar cost) Because if you want to build anything at all on the moon, you have to be able to keep the building machines running.