A U.S. Army Study for the Establishment of a Lunar Outpost - 9 June 1959
astronautix.comIn 1967, the US signed the Outer Space Treaty. Article IV states that the "establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications… …on celestial bodies shall be forbidden".
We'll see how realistic that is when some vital resource is discovered in Antarctica.
I have no idea what your comment has to do with the parent? Sorry, confused, could you clarify?
There is a similar treaty that applies to Antarctica. We know how to build bases there (there are over 50 research stations in Antarctica). If the Antarctic Treaty was broken by building a military base, there'd be a precedence for building a military base on the Moon too — once we've figured out how — and breaking the Outer Space Treaty.
I like these parts:
"There are no known technical barriers to the establishment of a manned installation on the moon."
"There is a requirement for a manned military outpost on the moon. The lunar outpost is required to develop and protect potential United States interests on the moon; to develop techniques in moon-based surveillance of the earth and space, in communications relay, and in operations on the surface of the moon; to serve as a base for exploration of the moon, for further exploration into space and for military operations on the moon if required"
The first is technically true, though. There is very little new technology which would have to be developed to establish an outpost on the moon, it would just be ridiculously expensive to ship everything up there.
In 1959 I am not sure it was really true that there were no known technical barriers. I appreciate though the optimism of von Braun (whose report this essentially was) that there were no such barriers. In 1959 they still had a number of things to do just to get to the moon, and 52 years later we still have not established a base there.
Today, and potentially then as well, there is virtually no strategic value to the moon whatsoever. Surveillance of earth and space and communications can both be done more cost-effectively by satellites, exploring further into space is not especially easier with the help of a moon base since the moon is still well enough within Earth's gravity well not to make for a useful waypoint to outlying destinations, and the other justifications are completely question-begging.
IMO we should really be building a Lunar outpost, not because it has strategic value at this moment, but because it will have that in the future. When travel to the rest of the solar system will be more commonplace, having an outpost on the moon is of really large strategic importance.
I wish humanity could still do big, ambitious projects like that.
Is that really true, though? According to this diagram, the moon seems pretty out of the way if you just want to go between Earth and, for instance, Mars. You get a lot of wasted delta-v due to the moon producing its own gravity well.
Interesting figure!
The low gravity is a big advantage though. It is very easy to get things into space from the moon.
So if you can construct things on the moon, you have an advantage in space. It also makes it easy to hurl things into space for more destructive reasons.
I'm pretty sure there are technical barriers to constructing an ore-mining-to-finished-product spaceship factory on the moon.
Sure, many. It's a huge challenge. Not impossible. If we'd set it as goal, we could develop the technology and science as we go. I'm sure humanity is inventive enough. I mean, we did go to the moon with 60's technology...
But even thinking ahead more than 2 years seems impossible these days, everything is focused on the now and short-term profit. Anyway, rant over, it's nice to think big instead of small once in a while :)
Eml2 would be a good place for rendezvous between earth reentry craft and interplanetary spacecraft. It's a low deltaV target from both earth surface and interplanetary trajectories, and using it would get us away from an architecture that can handle at most a 4 person mission profile.
Perhaps it is from growing up with Star Trek, but for me, space exploration and settlement is a no-brainer. I almost feel as if that's our purpose as a species. We're meant to evolve and expand. That's what we've been doing since day one. Space is the logical next step.
"To be second to the Soviet Union in establishing an outpost on the moon would be disastrous to our nation's prestige and in turn to our democratic philosophy."
Though it is probably easier to see now than it was during the cold war, that claim (especially the last part) is flawed logic.
Although countries may need to use military force for self-preservation, functional ideologies do not need to be propped up by being first, more prestigious, or impressive.
Actually the success of ideologies is more closely linked to the success of its implementations than its merit. For instance, the success of monarchies for such a long period in history was based on their stability. Likewise, it could be argued that the resurgence of democracy was based on instability in the existing regimes, more than any greater merit in the ideology. If the Soviets had been more successful, I can guarantee we'd be saying how the merit of equality of income is why the Soviets were successful, but we'd be wrong, just as saying the merit of democracy is why the US was successful.
The zero-G to high-G simulator (diagram at the bottom) is wonderful. Drop a sled down cliff for zero-G, then bottom out with a tight radius circle like a centrifuge. Wow.