The Moon or Mars which should be the first settlement?

[Logwyn]

Impact damage is vanishingly unlikely. Fresh impacts rarely happen.

Solar radiation is the bigger issue, with pretty much anything in the inner solar system. We're spoiled by the Earth's magnetic field. This is why astronauts generally have a limited amount of time they can effectively spend in space, over their careers; that radiation damage builds up and even with our current systems, it's not sufficient shielding for long-term health.

If this article is right about Mars. If you shield the spacecraft on the way and then bury the habit at least 5 meters and have the people there spend only 3 hours every 3 days. It will take 60 years for one of them to reach their career limit.

I would also say that they shouldn't take any bananas with them either.

[Unholyground]

Impact damage is vanishingly unlikely. Fresh impacts rarely happen.

Solar radiation is the bigger issue, with pretty much anything in the inner solar system. We're spoiled by the Earth's magnetic field. This is why astronauts generally have a limited amount of time they can effectively spend in space, over their careers; that radiation damage builds up and even with our current systems, it's not sufficient shielding for long-term health.

Yep it is scary, it will permanently damage your DNA over time. Ya radiation definitely is more of a concern for sure.

[Shadowferal]

Every detailed plan I ever read regarding going to Mars always insisted a moon base was mandatory. As a staging point if nothing else.

[Corvus]

I'm gonna disagree with everyone saying "the moon". It's down a gravity well, and as far as we know, it's fairly resource-light. What real reason do we have for a significant permanent settlement other than scientific outposts?

The moon is not resource light. It is poor in carbon and nitrogen but rich in oxygen and metals, particularly iron, magnesium, manganese, aluminium and titanium. It also has significant water at the poles.

So you have water and oxygen, both vital for actually living, plus all the materials you ned for manufacturing. You build your ships and refine the fuel on the moon and then launch from their as it is much, much cheaper than on earth. If you set up stations in space you'd still need to ship all the stuff needed there from somewhere and it is better doing it from the moon than from earth.

Heck, you could automate most of the processes on the moon if you really wanted to cut down on the need for people there.

[Endus]

The moon is not resource light. It is poor in carbon and nitrogen but rich in oxygen and metals, particularly iron, magnesium, manganese, aluminium and titanium. It also has significant water at the poles.

So you have water and oxygen, both vital for actually living, plus all the materials you ned for manufacturing. You build your ships and refine the fuel on the moon and then launch from their as it is much, much cheaper than on earth. If you set up stations in space you'd still need to ship all the stuff needed there from somewhere and it is better doing it from the moon than from earth.

Heck, you could automate most of the processes on the moon if you really wanted to cut down on the need for people there.

You're making that comparison to lifting material from Earth, but I made the point that asteroid mining is way, way cheaper, once the resources are in place to do it.

We have the technology to achieve this right now, actually. It just costs tens of billions with a turnaround time of decades before it's going to be productive, let alone making up that initial cost.

[PACOX]

To get either you need a super-heavy vehicle to get there.

The Saturn V is still the largest successful launch vehicle, and that was just to essentially touch down on the moon and get back. Far from a perfect vehicle and probably wouldn't pass certification today.

Point being the vehicle that gets to the Moon will be the same size if not larger (which basically the case with the SLS and SpaceX Spaceship), which a lot of the size being dedicated just carry the fuel to get the thing off the ground.

If we're already building these behemoths just to get humans to the Moon could you imagine how large a human-rated rocket going straight to Mars would have to be? One thats carrying a shielded module capable of protecting the astronauts throughout the journey, all the necessary supplies, equipment, fuel to get there and back plus redundancy? Remember in Interstellar where they were trying to figure out a way to defeat the limitations of gravity? Thats what we're facing.

So the better route for a Mars trip would be to assemble in space instead of trying to launch one massive piece at a time. A lot easier to launch segments into orbit one piece at a time than all at once. And if you're going to do that you're going to want an outpost in outer space as a staging point. Thats where something like the Lunar Gateway comes in, and why a Moon outpost comes way before a Mars one.

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You're right, it's in a even more dangerous position and is endangered by even more space debris than what is found around the moon, and is high enough to be endangered by meteors, plus whatever micro comets and such are also up there.

The ISS isn't exactly in a dangerous position though. Its in a very controlled orbit where potential dangers are mostly known/tracked on top of the ISS being able to shift its orbit if necessary. The risk of something hitting the ISS is minimal. Either way, the ISS is relatively small and still shielded for stray uncontrollable impacts.

Just hypothetically speaking, a Moon settlement would lack the advantage of a controlled orbit like the ISS. Its harder to track objects about the hit the Moon versus objects that intersect with the path of the ISS. The Moon is a straight-up garbage collector while ISS while the ISS is still within Earth's atmosphere, the Earth is constantly slowing down and clearing anything that might cross the path of the ISS. The Moon has no such atmosphere, anything hitting it is going to slow down, its hitting at max velocity, max integrity until it hits the surface of the Moon. I rather take my chances on the ISS.

With that said though, the chances of something randomly hitting either is very small. We're talking small moving objects in the vastness of space randomly hitting another small moving AND spinning object in the vastness of space. You sort of just take your chances.

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We'll be long dead before we'll be able to sustain a settlement on another celestial body. Really doesn't matter.

If we can sustain an outpost in Antarctica and the ISS we can sustain one on the Moon. The challenges are money and logistics. The real question is why? What are we getting out of it? Theres nothing to really gain from a permanent outpost right that would place a dent in costs. Not even scientific merit.

[Masark]

So the better route for a Mars trip would be to assemble in space instead of trying to launch one massive piece at a time. A lot easier to launch segments into orbit one piece at a time than all at once. And if you're going to do that you're going to want an outpost in outer space as a staging point. Thats where something like the Lunar Gateway comes in, and why a Moon outpost comes way before a Mars one.

If we intend to be serious about Mars rather than just doing a one-time plant-a-flag mission, we want a cycler. Or preferably, at least two of them.

[Lynarii]

I would go with a permanent spaceport-style base at a lagrange point first, but for a ground based 'base' off of earth, I'd pick Ceres as the first location. There's practical reasons to have a base there if we're planning on spreading out across the solar system, and would be a very useful jumping off point to Mars. Neither of which you can say about the Moon.

[XDurionX]

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If we can sustain an outpost in Antarctica and the ISS we can sustain one on the Moon. The challenges are money and logistics. The real question is why? What are we getting out of it? Theres nothing to really gain from a permanent outpost right that would place a dent in costs. Not even scientific merit.

Sustaining the ISS is hard, but still a lot easier than sustaining a "colony" on the moon. The ISS is easy mode. Regularly landing and starting supply flights on the moon is a whole different beast nad yields no merit whatsoever.

[Daronokk]

And then inhabitable again shortly after.

Oh you're soo smart with your nihilistic worldview, please tell me more while typing at your computer with all the luxuries you have.

Self-hate doesn't get you anywhere.

[Soulwind]

Oh you're soo smart with your nihilistic worldview, please tell me more while typing at your computer with all the luxuries you have.

Self-hate doesn't get you anywhere.

Ignoring the damage around you doesn't get you anywhere either. Leaving Earth because fixing the problems that we've caused would be harder isn't sustainable. Eventually we'd run out of planets to parasite, or some other species would put us in our place.

I'm all for space exploration, but it's not an excuse to embrace the worst of ourselves.

[Thekri]

I'm gonna disagree with everyone saying "the moon". It's down a gravity well, and as far as we know, it's fairly resource-light. What real reason do we have for a significant permanent settlement other than scientific outposts?

Instead, pick either the L4 or L5 Lagrange point for the Earth-Moon system, and build a significant space station there. You can set the "gravity" to a more convenient level by adjusting rotation speed. You have the same challenges of building it to survive vacuum. The technological and material requirements really aren't any higher than a moon base. It's just as far from the Earth as the Moon (same orbit, in fact, just ahead or behind). And there's no gravity to deal with on approach or departure; it isn't at the bottom of a gravity well, even a relatively shallow one like the moon. That vastly reduces the fuel requirements to dock and depart, making travel to and from a lot cheaper (and, generally, safer; losing thrust means you drift, not crash in to the surface).

Obviously, even less local resources than the Moon, but that's an issue we'd be addressing with the moonbase, too, and there's solutions like orbital mining operations. In theory, you could stick the main transit hub base in the Earth-moon L4, and an orbital mining facility in the L5; transferring materials from L5 to L4 would be super cheap; you're paying for speed of delivery and that's about it. If you determine that you can handle a several month or even a year's delay, it wouldn't cost much at all, and that's just for the commencement of delivery, or for any changes in content; a regular resource supply run can arrive however often is convenient, it's just a matter of how many additional deliveries are en route at a time.

I don't think a Mars base as a first concrete settlement is a great idea. Too far, too much can go wrong. But the Moon has little to offer.

Well the primary argument for a surface moon base is really "Practice". It isn't really practical in any way, it doesn't work well as a staging area for other places, but it is a fantastic place to just practice sustaining a base that isn't orbital and isn't terrestrial. This is a valuable exercise, since a lot of the major technologies needed to make this happen are going to be transferable (Oxygen, water, food, power, etc). This is the argument against all the people saying "Focus on our planet" as well. The fact is that Space Programs tend to pay huge technological dividends for this planet as well. For instance, a food manufacturing technology that is often hypothezied for such situations is growing only the edible parts of a plant/animal. So to expand the limited resources on the moon, we could focus technologies like just growing the grain part of wheat, or chicken breasts from stem cells, without the whole animal.

The moon (Or any space colony) creates a set up problems that are not unique to that body, but are more extreme, and thus have to be solved. If you can set up a colony that can thrive with extreme resource scarcity there, we can use those same technologies to use less resources here. That is the huge benefit of space exploration, and that is why a moon colony would still be valuable. This isn't to say LaGrange point stations wouldn't also be valuable, we could do both, or prioritize one or the other.

[Ryzael]

why bother settling, just build ships. planets moons and stars are resource nodes, not homes

[Soulwind]

why bother settling, just build ships. planets moons and stars are resource nodes, not homes

Anyone who grows up in space will be unable to set foot on a planet like Earth. Gravity defines the human body in many ways.

[cubby]

Impact damage is vanishingly unlikely. Fresh impacts rarely happen.

Solar radiation is the bigger issue, with pretty much anything in the inner solar system. We're spoiled by the Earth's magnetic field. This is why astronauts generally have a limited amount of time they can effectively spend in space, over their careers; that radiation damage builds up and even with our current systems, it's not sufficient shielding for long-term health.

I'm going to need an upfront promise of people not laughing too hard here, as I love science but may not be the best student of it. Anywho, here goes:

Could a space station and/or lunar base use a combination of lead windows (they are clear) and solar panels windows (leaded windows outside, with solar panel "affixed" on the inside) as a combination radiation protection and energy producer?

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You're making that comparison to lifting material from Earth, but I made the point that asteroid mining is way, way cheaper, once the resources are in place to do it.

We have the technology to achieve this right now, actually. It just costs tens of billions with a turnaround time of decades before it's going to be productive, let alone making up that initial cost.

I think you might be under-assuming how difficult and costly it is to get an asteroid into a specific position/orbit. And we're not even at the point of getting all the material (100% of which will have to be launched from Earth) to build a space station big enough to process the materials from said asteroid. And that doesn't even account for the dice roll that comes with asteroids - we won't know what materials are on it until we can get it closer (not in stable orbit) to analyze.

With the moon, we know resources are there, and even more importantly, where. We can build a base close to water (and therefore oxygen and rocket fuel), and we know there are basic materials along with exotics for building larger bases, resource mining, and possibly down the road, actual revenue generation. At the very least, almost-self-sustaining bases could be completed with resources on hand.

I believe I understand you point regarding the L4/L5 space station (I've read Seveneves a number of times, and I can almost spell orbital mechanics now) but it seems like it would take an enormous amount of resources for what would amount to a cosmic crap shoot. And don't misunderstand, asteroid mining is entirely the future of space exploration (resources, fuel, building materials, water, etc), but as a start, I think something guaranteed would be a better beginning.

[Thekri]

I'm going to need an upfront promise of people not laughing too hard here, as I love science but may not be the best student of it. Anywho, here goes:

Could a space station and/or lunar base use a combination of lead windows (they are clear) and solar panels windows (leaded windows outside, with solar panel "affixed" on the inside) as a combination radiation protection and energy producer?

Short answer: Yes. They actually do that.

Long answer: Sort of. "Radiation" is not a single thing, and lead doesn't magically stop it, nor do solar panels interact with a lot of it. So while a lot of different shielding techniques are used, the mix that gets through and hits the human body is going to be very different then the mix that hits your skin here on Earth (Which is dangerous and harmful already, you are always getting blasted with damaging radiation walking around here). Without any form of shielding, you would shrivel up and die in seconds. With better shielding, you can be ok for a long period of time, but it will be... different then on earth. It is really hard to replicate the effect of the massive amounts of radiation shielding that earth naturally has (Which as mentioned, still doesn't stop all of it, hence sunburns and skin cancer).

[PC2]

why bother settling, just build ships. planets moons and stars are resource nodes, not homes

Yes at first but eventually we should settle, transform, and populate every viable planet.

[Endus]

I'm going to need an upfront promise of people not laughing too hard here, as I love science but may not be the best student of it. Anywho, here goes:

Could a space station and/or lunar base use a combination of lead windows (they are clear) and solar panels windows (leaded windows outside, with solar panel "affixed" on the inside) as a combination radiation protection and energy producer?

Solar panel windows, technically yes, but there's a few problems with that idea. First is that windows are a terrible super bad idea in a space station. They're an obvious weak point. Structurally, you'd always be better off with a display panel on the inside and a camera on the outside to try and replicate the same view. You want what windows you DO have to be as small as possible. Solar panel windows have become a hot topic because, on Earth, we have these big largely glass-surfaced skyscrapers which could easily be repurposed into solar farms, if somewhat inefficiently (enough to offset their own power use, not really enough to act as a significant generator for the city around them). You've got the opposite problem with a space station; you want as little window surface as you can get away with. Additionally, for the rest of the surface, the big argument against casing the whole thing in solar panels is just accessibility. If you need to get at the hull surface or anything within it from the outside, you need to remove the solar panel on top of it first; this just adds complexity and difficulty, making everything awkward. Same for getting access to the backside of the solar panel. Whereas if you put it on an external array, none of this applies. This all becomes particularly true when you consider that the station would likely be rotating to create a simulation of gravity, so not always in direct sunlight, where an array can be manipulated to maximize how much sunlight it captures. And the only "cost" to doing this is something that's basically free, in space; literally, space. On Earth, we need to maximize the use of square footage, because we have limited space to work with. Not so much with an orbital station, not in practical terms until we start looking at Dyson Sphere levels of development, at least, where all these questions would be silly anyway. Most of these aren't strict science points, anyway; this is just practical engineering.

Lead lining and such helps, but the high-energy stuff they have to deal with once you're out of the magnetosphere is still going to be a problem; the ISS is a poor comparison there because it's not quite out of the magnetosphere and thus has partial protection. Even as well-protected as the ISS is, it's not perfect.

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I think you might be under-assuming how difficult and costly it is to get an asteroid into a specific position/orbit. And we're not even at the point of getting all the material (100% of which will have to be launched from Earth) to build a space station big enough to process the materials from said asteroid. And that doesn't even account for the dice roll that comes with asteroids - we won't know what materials are on it until we can get it closer (not in stable orbit) to analyze.

To be clear, I'm well aware that it would cost at least tens of billions of dollars, perhaps hundreds. And that's the up-front costs, followed by at least a couple decades of just waiting. We're basically talking about a single rocket aimed at a particular rock, which carries multiple drone thruster components. That's where the expense comes in. The drones would be designed to direct themselves to various positions on the rock, and drill themselves into place, so you've got thrust and attitude control. Then, you nudge the rock into an orbit that'll eventually bring it to a Lagrange point where you can decelerate it to the point that it gets "stuck". For a cost comparison, the missing to land on the comet that went by a few years back cost about one billion, with similar procedures, but a lot more difficulty in executing the landing due to conditions on a comet and the speed it was traveling at. The most complex part is calculating the orbital dynamics to maneuver that hunk into position, since we're basically trying to nudge a rock off the top of a mountain and get a hole-in-one at the golf course at the base with it.

And that price tag definitely didn't include the cost of the mining and refining and processing that would need to be manufactured in orbit. Though, if we take a long-enough perspective, you need a minimal operation to get that started, because it can be self-expanding once you get going.

With the moon, we know resources are there, and even more importantly, where. We can build a base close to water (and therefore oxygen and rocket fuel), and we know there are basic materials along with exotics for building larger bases, resource mining, and possibly down the road, actual revenue generation. At the very least, almost-self-sustaining bases could be completed with resources on hand.

I believe I understand you point regarding the L4/L5 space station (I've read Seveneves a number of times, and I can almost spell orbital mechanics now) but it seems like it would take an enormous amount of resources for what would amount to a cosmic crap shoot. And don't misunderstand, asteroid mining is entirely the future of space exploration (resources, fuel, building materials, water, etc), but as a start, I think something guaranteed would be a better beginning.

The big issue with the Moon is the same issue as with the Earth, just less so. Gravity wells suck. Anything you want in orbit, you have to pay to lift out of that gravity well, and that lift is a massive ongoing cost. A moon base works if your goal is "to have a base on the Moon", but if your goal is to make space exploration cheap and accessible, you basically need orbital mining. Lifting from the Moon is less expensive than lifting from Earth, but still not cheap. And this presumes that we can source lift fuel on the Moon, directly.

Also, on the "crap shoot" comment; we can use relatively cheap probes. Just a quick check to make sure it's an iron-rich rock, and we're good to go. Cost compared to the overall mission is tiny. A single rock will last us decades, if we're choosy, and by the time we're using it up, we could have another rolling in.

[Adam Jensen]

The Moon.

Once we establish a launch site on the Moon, it'll probably be more fuel efficient to launch further missions to mars, given the Moon's lower escape velocity. Of course, the question that has to be asked next is, how cost-efficient is it to send fuel to the moon?

Also, if we do start a colony on the Moon and get attacked by a Hive Prince named Crota . . . just remember to use his sword logic against him.

[Mihalik]

The moon doesn’t have anything to offer. Mars could, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_resources#Helium-3

Fuel.

And a low gravity environment to act as a lunch pad.