. CASE FOR MOON FIRST - 01 PREFACE

Preface = why go to the Moon first?

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You may have heard advocates say we should ignore the Moon, and head straight for Mars, and they may even say that the Moon is as dull as a ball of concrete. But what about the other view, put forward by many enthusiasts for the Moon, that we should start there instead,as the first place to send humans after LEO? As you read this book, you may be surprised to learn that the Moon is resource rich, and fascinating, with many new discoveries since the time of Apollo, as well as many mysteries still to solve. It may have potential for exports of metals and volatiles. It's also far more promising for tourist hotels, and human research stations, because it is so much easier to get to than Mars, it's a great place for radio and infrared telescopes, and it's potentially valuable as a place to make computer chips and solar cells that require high vacuum, amongst other benefits. And it may surprise you a lot to learn that the Moon has many advantages over Mars as a place to create habitats for humans too.

Inside look at one of the ideas for the ESA moon village, using 3D printing on the Moon for the radiation shielding. Image credit Foster + Partners / ESA. Their new director, Professor Johann-Dietrich Woerner is keen on taking us back to the Moon first, and has an exciting vision for a lunar villageon the Moon as a multinational venture involving astronauts, Russian cosmonauts, maybe even Chinese taikonauts, and private space as well.

That's actually the plan of the ESA, India, Japan, China etc, they all want to send humans back to the Moon first. Many US astronauts and space enthusiasts think the same way, but their voice doesn't get heard so much in the States. Even Buzz Aldrin, a keen Mars colonization advocate, didn't entirely agree with the way Obama quoted his "Been there and done that" saying he meant it facetiously.

You need to look at the Moon with "Moon spectacles" and when you do, in one comparison after another, the Moon comes out top. It's also close enough to scout out with robots controlled in near to real time from Earth. Then once we decide on a site for our base, we can use them again to get our lunar village ready, with the habitats, utilities, landing beacon and landing pad all in place, before our first astronauts arrive.

The Apollo astronauts were like the early Antarctic explorers, who set their first footprints on an almost entirely unexplored territory, this time in space. Though none of them died in space or on the Moon, their missions were risky and new missions back to the Moon will be also.

Nevertheless, the Moon is a far safer destination than Mars. We know we can do it, and we can set off at any time, with lifeboats to get us back to Earth within three days in an emergency. A mission to Mars would be a multi-year journey with no lifeboats. An Apollo 13 type accident could not be survived, and a mistake which just leads to the crew abandoning their base on the Moon would kill everyone at the distance of Mars. This also makes the Moon a place where we can try much more adventurous ideas and experiments with methods of living there.

Shackleton's Endurance trapped in the ice in Antarctica before it sunk. Shackleton's part overwintered huddled beneath boats and hunting seals for food. Antarctica is far more habitable than Mars, and back then, before the Antarctic treaty, the whole continent was open for colonization, if anyone had been interested, but there were no efforts by any nation to colonize Antarctica. We don't colonize all the possible places where humans could survive.

The enthusiasts for Mars colonization present a rosy picture of a colonized Mars and they think that we will succeed in colonizing their favourite planet, so long as we start on it quickly. But there are many places on Earth that we don't colonize. Indeed, to date, we have only tried to colonize places where humans can survive with stone age technology. What's more, many colonization attempts even of those places have failed.

To go to space to colonize, right now, is like Shackleton saying "Great, we have overwintered on Antarctica, hunting seals and huddling under boats, we must be ready to colonize it!".

Let's go to space like the early Antarctic explorers instead, to find out what's there. Along the way we can discover if there is anywhere to set up home, and we don't know in advance that Mars is that place. For instance, perhaps we may find vast lunar caves, kilometers wide and over 100 kilometers in length, as the Grail data suggests, as vast as an O'Neil Cylinder. If so, these could be amongst the easiest and safest places to build habitats in space. Or perhaps habitats at the lunar poles are best, because of the volatiles we know are there, or as a more out there proposal, the idea of Venus cloud colonies may have more to recommend it than you think. Then there's the 1970s idea of living in large slowly spinning habitats built with materials from the Moon and the asteroids.

Another reason given to head off to Mars as quickly as possible is to "backup Earth". But what plausible near future disaster could end up with an Earth less habitable than Mars, with its perchlorate laced dust storms, solar storms of deadly radiation, half the sunlight of Earth, all fresh water frozen into ice like Antarctica, no oxygen to breathe, and the air so thin that the moisture lining your lungs would boil, without a full body pressurized spacesuit?

If we ever need to restore anywhere with a backup of seeds, technology, and knowledge, it's Earth that we'd restore, not Mars. That makes the Earth itself, or the Moon, the ideal places to keep these repositories.

And if we do send humans to Mars, why not study it telerobotically from its moons or from orbit first, in a shirt sleeves environment? Why rush to the surface as quickly as possible, and risk a human crash in the one place in the inner solar system most vulnerable to Earth microbes? I would be the worst possible anti-climax in the search for life in our solar system to get there only to discover life that we brought ourselves.

In this vision, human space exploration is open ended. We have the entire solar system to explore with our missions, from Mercury all the way out to Jupiter's moons and beyond. The Moon is our gateway and natural starting point for this exploration. And there's no rush; we can afford to keep our future options open as we explore and find out what the possibilities are.

You can hear me talk about this book and answer questions about it as guest for David Livingston's TheSpaceShow in his Broadcast 2710: Robert Walker

from the UK

This book is also available on kindle

and for more information please view the following web pages

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https://robertinventor.online/booklets/Online-Case-for-Moon.htm

. CASE FOR MOON FIRST - 01 PREFACE

Preface = why go to the Moon first?

Contents