Completely random thought but also helped burst an idea :D

dpaynter26

I was sitting and wondering, why haven't we built anything on the moon? i mean yeah it costs a lot for any country to go to the moon but...why havent we built anything there like space stations ON the moon and whatnot? Anyway it inspired an idea to build a Moon Station environment, or even a small area of a moon station environment i know it's kinda already been done with the black ops zombie map "Moon" but hey atleast i have a bit of reference, anyone have any ideas or opinions?

r_fletch_r

Do some research, NASA are up to some very interesting stuff.
They even released a game about it

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/analogs/hawaii_analog_2008.html

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-giGvOKzI1Q[/ame]


you may also want to read the forum rules, this is rather close to a blog post

dfacto

High cost, low gain. There's no really compelling reason to go to the moon and build a base RIGHT NOW (other than it being awesome). It will happen eventually, but not in the next 20 years.

Mark Dygert

The US won't do it, NASA is broke, they keep punching its budget like some magical budget balancing pinata. "Oh look you smash these satellites with this rocket and cash falls out! Sweet!"

That and NASA has a pretty strict culture of don't colonize planets or alter them in any major way other than to study them and learn more about them. Their main goal right now is to explore planets and the solar system in unmanned craft. They'll probably kill the manned space program during the next round of budget talks.

So it will have to be some other economic super power that has a lot of money to burn.
/look at China

XenoKratios

I think Russia, or maybe even China (India is coming up quickly) will set up the first base there.

I hear and read lots of controversy about the moon... From structures on the dark side of the moon, to the way the moon is depicted for us, black white and grey (for some random reason even the new pictures are like that... I would think in full color it would be easier for us to identify many thing we couldn't before (minerals etc), when its actually a brilliant sparkling gem, floating alongside our earth.

Sandro

That and NASA has a pretty strict culture of don't colonize planets or alter them in any major way other than to study them and learn more about them

I doubt mankind has resources or technology to terraform and colonize planets yet :poly124:

Autocon

America is barley able to stay aflot as is right now. Doing a moon base (although fucking AWESOME) wouldnt benifit us enough to justify it. Also Nasa pretty much went under the chopping block with budget cuts.


Also some people don't believe we landed on the moon. America still the only ones to do it after 50ish years?

tyddynroger

nice idea if you want some inspiration try watching the film Moon.

eld

JOHN MADDEN!



AEIOU!

Striff

Autocon wrote: »

America is barley able to stay aflot as is right now. Doing a moon base (although fucking AWESOME) wouldnt benifit us enough to justify it. Also Nasa pretty much went under the chopping block with budget cuts.


Also some people don't believe we landed on the moon. America still the only ones to do it after 50ish years?

Other countries have landed craft on the moon, but the USA is the only one to put a human being on it.

Striff

Also, considering the USA currently does not even have a spacecraft to put astronauts into orbit, they are a LONNNGGGG way off of colonizing the moon.

Obama set NASA back a couple decades.

dfacto

Actually, Bush did. The Constellation program was a giant turd that never would have produced a decent vehicle, and its cancellation was a given. Obama just delivered the coup de grace.

The private sector route has a much higher chance of producing suitable launch vehicles without the political haranguing that NASA has to endure over every cent. SpaceX seems to be doing quite nicely so far.

fearian

dfacto wrote: »

High cost, low gain. There's no really compelling reason to go to the moon and build a base RIGHT NOW (other than it being awesome). It will happen eventually, but not in the next 20 years.

NASA won't, they may never given their current trajectory, but several major governments have pledged moon bases within as few as twenty years or probably more likely 30 - 40. I'm trying to google my source for that, it was in the news a year or so ago...

edit: quick and dirty search result - http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/is-russia-planning-to-build-a-permanent-moon-base/237059/

Putin reportedly said outside of his Moscow residence at a meeting recognizing the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's spaceflight. "We need to increase our presence on the global space market."

Various records and reports suggest that Putin hopes to both build a base near the moon's north pole and travel to Mars by 2030.

fearian

dfacto wrote: »

Actually, Bush did. The Constellation program was a giant turd that never would have produced a decent vehicle, and its cancellation was a given. Obama just delivered the coup de grace.

The private sector route has a much higher chance of producing suitable launch vehicles without the political haranguing that NASA has to endure over every cent. SpaceX seems to be doing quite nicely so far.

ooh yes. There's also Branson's orbital tourism, John Carmack has founded a company aiming at the same thing with the end goal of orbital transport - so clearly predicting moon bases there. And rounding off the pack there's my favorite, Copenhagen Suborbitals. They're an open source project that runs on donations. It started off as some guys who built motherfucking submarines as a hobby, then announced they wanted to put a guy in orbit. They post all their progress online and are very cool.

dpaynter26

wow guys thanks for all the feedback lol