A moon colony is a waste of money
By David Frum, CNN Contributor
updated 8:04 AM EST, Mon January 30, 2012
NASA moon and ISS – current technical limit
Verne’s
imagined limit
Sheppard takes Antares to the moon - previous technical
limit
Gingrich meets technical and financial limits
Current acceptable technical, financial, and political limit
Cassi Creek: Base off
base with current reality
Frum writes in reference to Gingrich’s promise of a moon
base cum 51st state:
“The hard truth to deliver to the laid-off
engineers on Florida's space coast is that space exploration is another
industry where automation has reduced the number of human employees needed. To
propose putting 13,000 human beings on the moon is a lot like proposing to
return to the days when steel mills employed tens of thousands of people. It's
not a vision of the future. It's nostalgia.”
The Gingrich proposal makes no mention of how the other
nations of the world may regard such a blatant act of colonialism. While I regard our decline in funding and
results for space exploration, the time has come for actual human expansion
toward the stars to become a global project aimed at expanding the drive to explore
and exploit our universe. No single
nation should plan to colonize the moon and outer planetary bodies as we did
various parts of the Earth.
Gingrich’s “moon state” is obviously intended to become a
militarized base with US troops securing the moon for corporations that have
paid for GOP/teavangelists to be re-elected.
We have no means of transporting and sustaining a battalion or so of lunar-based
troops at the outer ends of our technologic and economic reach. While there may be people desperate enough or
foolish enough to sign up for a one-way trip to the moon, I don’t know of any
foolish enough to sign that contract.
That duty station would be grimmer and less socially rewarding than
being stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan and having to live under local customs
and religious laws. Yet as grim as that
would be, lunar duty would demand and require an even harsher social and
military contract.
If Gingrich wants to staff an all-volunteer colony on the
moon, it should be his name and his ass that fill the first transport roster
and seat. And it’s doubtful that he’
pass the physical or mental exam to become a colonist. His abrasive and combative nature would be
likely to cost him dearly. His “I’m
smarter than you all” attitude would keep him from listening to the “underlings
as they explained how such necessary things as pressure suits, toilets, water
sources, and airlocks work and how they had to be used.
Next episode: “Explosive decompression and sanitation
modules” or “Cleanup in tunnel 5”
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