[ExI] Hawking urges Moon landing to 'elevate humanity'

Sat Jun 24 07:51:24 UTC 2017

Sounds like a plan, I love it. Is there any project to do that, with a
feasibility study and some funding?

On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 7:38 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
> Then here, once again, is my plan for this:
>
> 1) Find a high-valuable-metal-content asteroid of sufficient mass,
> preferably in an orbit that makes step 2 convenient.
>
> 2) Move it into the Earth-Moon system.  (Possibly GEO - there's an
> unused swath over the Pacific, and GEO may be as close as politically
> feasible - but anywhere no further than the Moon will suffice.)
>
> 3) Set up a mining camp, start extracting the easiest-to-extract
> chunks, land them on Earth, and sell them to achieve first revenue.
> Aggressively ignore the pundits who howl that the only profitable use
> of resources in orbit must be in orbit, but who can't point to
> specific buyers with nearly as much to spend as, say, the platinum
> commodity market.  Accept that first sales of these minerals will
> start crashing the market; getting to first revenue ASAP is critical
> to getting the funding to have gotten this far.
>
> 4) Use the profits to expand the mining camp, eventually using the
> slag to make a disc around 100 m thick and 1-2 km diameter.  Fill it
> with air, line the outer rim of the disc with hydroponics (for food,
> primary air and water recycling, and radiation shielding), spin the
> disc so it reaches 1G above the hydroponics (where people will
> reside), and otherwise make it habitable.  Possibly set up automated
> lunar mining - maybe railgunning cargo up to the mining facility - as
> part of this.
>
> 5) Once the colony has been sufficiently tested that people can trust
> their lives to it, evacuate the mining camp into the mining colony.
> By this point some museums may be willing to buy the remnants of the
> camp, if it can be deorbited sufficiently intact.
>
> 6) Use profits to expand the colony, setting up secondary services
> (health, education, and so on), encouraging other users (such as
> national & international space science efforts) to lease part of the
> facility.
>
> 7) Once the colony gets populated enough, lengthen the disc into a
> cylinder.  (Construct a shell for the extra volume, spin it up and
> attach it to one side, pressurize it and verify airtightness, extend
> hydroponics along the "floor" of the new space, then dismantle the
> now-internal bulkhead.)
>
> 8) Press on to at least 10,000 people, the absolute minimum to have
> any chance of being generally recognized as a true city in space.
> More is better, of course.  (3 or even 10 actually in space is just a
> few people camping, no matter how many still on Earth support them.
> Even 100 or 1,000 is a mere facility, under the laws of a sponsoring
> Earth-bound government.)
>
> 9) Probably around 5 km long, stop lengthening the cylinder and start
> making a second one, spinning in the other direction but linked by a
> hub (which will cause the natural political shape to be different
> districts in the same city, or different states in the same nation,
> but not different nations that might someday war upon one another).
> Once the second cylinder starts filling up, make more cylinders in
> counter-rotating pairs.
>
> None of this assumes that there will be any other significant economic
> generator in space.  There probably will, of course, but assuming they
> will and relying on that means you can't get the resources to start.
>
> On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 11:47 PM, Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Good point. We don't need to see people walking on the Moon tomorrow.
>> But there must be credible plans to go back there to stay before our
>> generation logs off and the next becomes old.
>>
>> The ESA "Moon Village" initiative looks great, but just don't trust EU
>> bureaucracy to get anything good done anytime soon. I am afraid the
>> Moon Village will get lost in committee after council meeting after
>> committee after budget cut and all that. The private sector should
>> step in. Musk has the heart in the right place, but I really think the
>> Moon is a much more affordable intermediate stepping stone.
>>
>> Of course, the private sector asks where is the money. It's important
>> to find good answers.
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 8:16 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> And...there's simply not enough money, or competent people, or time,
>>> or whatever other necessary component to make all that happen at once.
>>>
>>> So what can we focus on first, that will make the rest happen?
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 11:12 PM, Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Adrian, please repeat with me the magic word: AND. Repeat it like a
>>>> mantra, and, And, AND... it's really a magic word.
>>>>
>>>> We need space industrialization. YES. We need cheap access to space.
>>>> YES. We need commercial space. YES. We need cubesats (YES). Cubecab is
>>>> awesome. YES!!! ;-)
>>>>
>>>> AND we need to see people walking on the Moon to intoxicate us with
>>>> imagination highs and never ending dreams. YES. Otherwise, why should
>>>> a young and brilliant engineer want to work on space projects instead
>>>> of developing one more useless phone app and become an instant
>>>> millionaire?
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 7:52 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Not so.  Space industrialization can make that happen.
>>>>>
>>>>> The Moon landings were one thing.  Lots of people getting very, VERY
>>>>> rich (billionaires if not trillionaires) from their workings in space?
>>>>>  That's a whole other kind of sexy.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 10:30 PM, Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Adrian, of course this depends on one's emotional triggers, but to me
>>>>>> the ISS is no powerful symbol. It's sexy like a brick. When I was at
>>>>>> ESA I used to criticize the ISS/Shuttle emphasis and the abandonment
>>>>>> of Moon exploration as a losers' choice that would make space boring
>>>>>> and uninteresting. I got into troubles with top management for that on
>>>>>> at least one occasion, but facts proved me right.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Not to say that we don't need the ISS, and of course as you said we
>>>>>> need cheap access to space more than everything, but we need to make
>>>>>> space sexy again (as Hawking says), and only manned exploration of the
>>>>>> Moon and the planets can do that.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 9:15 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> Another moon landing would not be such a symbol.  It's been done, and people
>>>>>>> have seen what little comes of it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Just extending the ISS's lifespan, or setting up the ISS's replacement (to
>>>>>>> be launched and manned before the last person leaves the ISS), would do
>>>>>>> more.  People are in space today, and that hasn't gone away yet.  That is a
>>>>>>> powerful, ongoing symbol.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Jun 22, 2017 6:07 AM, "Giulio Prisco" <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Of course I agree that cheaper space access is needed and, once it's
>>>>>>>> there, will open many doors. But don't dismiss the power of symbols.
>>>>>>>> Apollo was all about flags and footprints, and everyone knew that. Yet
>>>>>>>> Apollo inspired a whole generation, and some of them did great things,
>>>>>>>> in space and in other sectors. We need cheap access to space, and
>>>>>>>> people like you are doing good things for that, but we also need to
>>>>>>>> start dreaming again.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 3:32 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>> > On Wed, Jun 21, 2017 at 12:18 AM, Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com>
>>>>>>>> > wrote:
>>>>>>>> >> Hawking urges Moon landing to 'elevate humanity'
>>>>>>>> >> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40345048
>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>> > Even Obama said "we've been there", IIRC.  Flags and footprints won't
>>>>>>>> > help - on the Moon or on Mars.
>>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>>> > What we need is more affordable space access.  That will cause all
>>>>>>>> > other space dreams to become far more possible - and be enough to
>>>>>>>> > cause many to happen.
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