Lunar News Network

Go To Mars, Skip The Moon?

This Wired News report (Americans Find Out NASA Is Going Back to the Moon) offers an answer to the question about why we should go to the Moon first instead of going direclty to Mars:

It's a good idea to go to the moon to not only check out all systems and hardware, but more importantly (and more transferably) to design surface-operations protocols, to work out kinks and most importantly for a new generation of space explorers -- to build up experience before the more-challenging Mars expeditions.

Going to Mars will always be dangerous, but if we use the Moon as a practice run we can improve our chances of success on Mars.

NASA Spin-Offs

The Political Action For Space blog notes a new feature on the NASA website which highlights all the spin-off benefits that we have earned over the years by funding NASA. So, the next time someone asks what we get out of funding space exploration, you will have a ready answer.

Defending Space Exploration

Over at the Freakonomics Blog, Steven J. Dubner asks group of space authorities: Is space exploration worth the cost? G. Scott Hubbard, Joan Vernikos, Kathleen M. Connell, Keith Cowing, and David M. Livingston, and John M. Logsdon contribute their views on the value of space exploration.

More Reasons To Go

Ever since NASA unveiled its plans for establishing a permanent base on the Moon, people have argued about which rationales are compelling enough to justify the enormous risk and expense involved in such a venture.  Robert Shapiro argues (The Space Review - Why the Moon? Human survival!) that the best reason may be simply to insure the future of the human race.

Space Resources

In the 1970s many believed that space was the answer to the expected impending shortage of energy and other resources, a belief that was discredited by declines in resource prices in the decades that followed. Now, says Nader Elhefnawy (The Space Review - The limits to growth and the turn to the heavens), it may be time to revisit those earlier claims.

More Reasons To Go

NASA's plans for a lunar base have prompted people to ask, "Why the Moon?" Michael Huang suggests (The Space Review - Humans for humans' sake) a few reasons to put on the list.

Explaining Moonbase

Last week NASA announced its plans to establish a permanent human base on the Moon. Jeff Foust argues (The Space Review - Moonbase why) that, if those plans have any chance of becoming reality, NASA needs to focus less on how and where to build that base and more on why humans should go to the Moon at all.

Lunar Observatories

Hosting an observatory is but one of the many possible missions for a lunar base. Space.com reports (Lunar Observatories: Grand Plans vs. Clear Problems) that, "Astronomers are split over the merits of lunar-based observatories compared with those in free space like the Hubble Space Telescope."

Vision Strategy

Space - NASA Weighs U.S. Strategy for Moon Exploration: NASA is set to roll out next month a U.S. national strategy for lunar exploration, one that outlines both robotic exploration needs and the rationale for sending humans back to the Moon.

Human vs. Robotic Exploration

USA Today tech columnist Angela Gunn has some thoughts on the perpetual debate over bots vs. human space exploration:

In the wake of this week's win for the physics research done on the COBE project and the latest achievenments of our long-running Mars rovers, the long-simmering war between proponents of manned and unmanned space travel has heated up. I'm firmly on the side of unmanned craft (more cost-efficient, better range, better observational capacity), so spacescan.org's spirited defense of that stance works for me. I respect those arguing the other side of the issue, though, and spacepolitics.com didn't fail to work in a rebuttal to such claims in a COBE-related post. What I haven't got an ounce of patience for is the strain-at-a-mote school of thought, which ignores gross cost overruns in other parts of our federal budget while whining about the relative pittance we spent on space and science. The comments in these situations are at least half the fun, so budget your reading time accordingly.

I'm in favor of doing both at the same time, using robotic missions to explore and human missions to establish outposts and stay a while.