alt Hacker NewsWe don‘t want to colonize space. Colonizing space is science fiction, not a serious goal for humanity, and certainly not an engineering challenge. There is no reason for humans to live anywhere other then on Earth. We have more reasons to live on Antarctica or the deep ocean then on the Moon, Mars or Alpha Centauri.
What I really want is for us to send a lander and a launcher to Mars capable of returning to earth the the capsules Perseverance has been collecting. I would love for geologists on earth to examine Mars rock under a microscope. I would want them to take detailed pictures of an exoplanet using the Sun as a gravitational lens. And I would love it if they could send probes to Alpha Proxima using solar sails to get there within a couple of decades.
None of these would benefit from having a moon base. In fact this moon base seems to be diverting funds away from missions with more chance of success and more scientific value.
> We don‘t want to colonize space
I do. Plenty of people do. Plenty of people also think exoplanet science is useless. I disagree with them. It the arguments are symmetric to those against human spaceflight.
> certainly not an engineering challenge
…how? We don’t have the technology to do this.
> There is no reason for humans to live anywhere other then on Earth. We have more reasons to live on Antarctica or the deep ocean then on the Moon, Mars or Alpha Centauri
Strongly disagree. You’re describing disrupting biospheres.
> None of these would benefit from having a moon base
Of course it does. ISRU (and baseload launch demand) decreases costs of access to deep space.
> diverting funds away from missions with more chance of success and more scientific value
The science slakes our curiosity. The engineering slakes our needs. And they both benefit from each other. Claiming Starship and in-orbit refueling won’t benefit scientific missions is myopic.