Google Wants To Go To The Moon by 2012

[Wezil]

Cheater! You only mapped it.

Now make the trip!

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Aeson
I win!

Bah! You'll never make it passed Vegas.

[Aeson]

Every great expedition had it's detractors... Once I get a car and one of those rover thingies, we'll see who's laughing!

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
In water you have the two basic ingredients for rocket fuel; hydrogen and helium (...)

What have you been drinking?

[Imran Siddiqui]

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as Google's goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 80 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

Google chooses to go to the moon. Google chooses to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of Google's energies and skills, because that challenge is one that Google is willing to accept, one Google is unwilling to postpone, and one which Google intends to win, and the others, too (and you can put a MASSIVE spy satellite on that thing).

It is for these reasons that Google regards the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during Google's incumbency in the office of Supreme Leader of the World.

[Whaleboy]

Er, we have enough here.

But from down here, it's expensive to get it up there.

What have you been drinking?

Oops! Fixed.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Lorizael


So because it would only be valuable in a few decades (your assertion) we shouldn't try to start it now? If it will always only be valuable "in a few decades" we'll never actually get around to harvesting it.

Further, and more what I was talking about earlier, there are minerals and metals found on the Moon that can be used in manufacturing.

Zero-gee manufacturing is an industry that companies are very much looking into in the future, and if they can get their raw materials from the Moon instead of the Earth, their costs will be greatly reduced.

It costs ~ 1B dollars to launch anything( anything being defined as 89 thousand pounds) with a space shuttle. And the moon won't have heavier elements because of how it was formed, so it won't be so useful. Now perhaps towing asteroids to L5 will make sense, but that is even further off for us.

Originally posted by Wezil
So should we stop space exploration/science until better propulsion systems come along?

Its not going to because we aren't investing in it. We have pretty much stopped everything except the toy stuff.

[DanS]

On some of the web sites that I visit, there's some back of the envelope discussions about what it would take to do this. As a first approximation, for a mass budget, we're talking rovers in the 10 - 30 kg range.

[Kataphraktoi]

Originally posted by DanS


Yeh, shutdown to the tune of $17 billion per annum.

Piddly. During the mid 1960s it made up around 5% of the national budget. That is a huge decrease in actual purchase power. We are now spending 600+ billion on defense alone.

According to budget documents obtained from the Government Printing Office, the national budget for 2007 totals about $2.784 trillion. At $16.143 billion, spending on NASA accounts for 0.58% of this.

Im not challenging that there is water on the moon, but link? I couldnt find anything on google.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=water+on+the+moon&btnG=Search

Im sure im overlooking something

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Kataphraktoi
Im not challenging that there is water on the moon, but link? I couldnt find anything on google.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=water+on+the+moon&btnG=Search

Im sure im overlooking something

LINK

Oops. This article updates me on stuff I didn't know. I'd heard about Clementine's reported finding of ice. But I did not know that later studies called this finding into question. According to this article, the issue remains unresolved.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Damn... I thought Zkribbler at any rate would enjoy my "Googling" of the Kennedy speech .

[OzzyKP]

I liked it.

(though you need to fix the 35 years thing...)

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Aeson
I win!

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&geocode=&saddr=los+angeles&daddr=Moon,+South+Dakota,+United+States&sll=34.05332,-118.24498&sspn=0.839684,1.2854&ie=UTF8&cd=2&ll=42.261049,-102.875977&spn=23.968244,41.132813&z=5&om=1

lol

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
It is for these reasons that Google regards the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during Google's incumbency in the office of Supreme Leader of the World.

it's about time we outsourced the US Presidency

[Eli]

You all forget that the mission doesn't have to cost $30M. The Scaled Composites Spaceship One cost more than the $10M that the X-Prize promised them.

Take a lander+rover mission that is filled with people's personal stuff. It lands on the moon, leaves all the stuff there (for a hefty fee), gathers some moon rocks for sale back on Earth, and completes Google's requirements. Google's $30M can be what makes this mission into a profitable one.