Pajamas Media has a fantastic piece by Buzz Aldrin and Taylor Dinerman about man’s return to the moon. Aldrin begins:
On my last trip to the moon I didn’t get to stay the whole day and had to share my accommodations with another man. If I could go back, I would expect not only a larger room, but a longer moment to gaze at the stars and the cloudy blue ball that should only be mankind’s starter home.
Read it all. There are a lot of reasons why it’s long overdue to return to the moon, including the construction of a permanent station there (the details are there), harvesting energy (“lunar solar power beamed directly from the Moon to the Earth’s surface”), and something I consider of paramount importance to the future of space exploration:
An American moon base would insure that traditional American ideas such as private property and homesteading would influence the future legal regime. Otherwise the Europeans and others might try and push their model of tight government control and high taxes onto the off-Earth economy of the late 21st century. Such an environment would stifle the creative endeavors not only of American entrepreneurs such as space ship one financed by Paul Allen, built by Burt Rutan, that forms the basis for Virgin Galactic’s suborbital space tourism project.
I won’t live to see it, but I hate the idea of man continuing to be stuck on one planet when things like survival — and destiny — are at stake.
It’s a crying shame this wasn’t done before now, but I’m glad to see that it will happen. True, I might not live to see it, but that does not mean I can’t support it anyway.
Comments
2 responses to “(I should probably never say never)”
There are actually a few other good reasons to go back. One is that we could only construct a particle accelerator large enough to answer the big questions of particle physics on the moon. Another is the richness of Lunar soil when it comes to Helium 3, which might be mined to provide for our mobile energy needs.
Regardless of the particulars, however, I think that long-term investment and research are essential activities of government, and establishing extraterrestrial bases of activity is high on the list of things we ought to be doing and are not.
All the Gerard K. O’Neill plan ever needed was backers… lots of money in 1969-70 terms, yes. The basic physics and how to make it work economically has been done to orbit with small lunar station for orbital manufacturing plants.
Today, of course, we will boldly go forth with technology first pioneered at the beginning of last century! I am so very glad that this didn’t happen earlier when the true experts were around… saved the world, that. Yes, get rid of the majority of the drag, put on some boost and in no time at all you are in orbit.