Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn’t we do those things directly, without going there?
It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.
I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that’s why we poors support it, but that doesn’t “pay the bills.” What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?
Staging area for interplanetary exploration. It takes a lot of energy to leave the earth, making the rest of the journey to Mars or Jupiter quite difficult. It doesn’t take nearly as much energy to launch from the moon though.
The practical universe ends where the solar wind meets the interstellar medium. Baring scifi plot contrivance extra-luminality, this is it for us.
70 years ago people said we’d never go to the moon. 100 years ago people said we’d never fly across the Atlantic. 600 years ago people said we’d never circumnavigate the globe. 1,000 years ago we couldn’t travel to China. 10,000 years ago we’d never see past that far mountain.
Explore. Who cares? Where’s your wanderlust?
It sort of dies out before the first 1.58-5 of a lightyear. But be my guest, consign your offspring’s offspring’s offspring to the consequences of your wanderlust.
Moreover, there’s a humongous range of possible radiations, temperatures, elemental combinations, gravitys, pressures. The range necessary to keep a human alive is a one dimensional sliver on the pie chart.
No one will survive a trip to Jupiter. They would learn nothing a probe would not learn.
The idea is to make and launch probes on the moon using lunar materials as much as possible. People would be staying on the moon and launching probes, not going out with them.