As the world watched, Neil Armstrong stepped off the lunar lander and into history. With both feet firmly planted on the lunar surface, he uttered (and botched) his famous line, “That’s one small step for {a} man, one giant leap for mankind.” Six hundred million people swelled with pride at those words, reveling at what the human race had finally accomplished. (wikipedia “Apollo 11”)
But that’s not what really happened.
The fact of the matter is that the United States of America put a man on the Moon. It was not a world effort. The only other country that had anything to do with it was the Soviet Union, and their contribution was the fact that they were the ones we were out to beat. WE did it, WE put a man on the Moon, and WE were rightfully proud of our nation’s accomplishment. Forty years have passed since that day, and not one other country has duplicated our success.
Unfortunately, neither have we.
Yes, we did go back a few times. We left our flags, spent rockets, and other assorted garbage behind but, ultimately, we abandoned the Moon.
I was able to watch the last moon shot in person. My father, brother and I went to Florida just to see the launch, and it was something I will never forget. The roar could be heard across the cape. The rocket lit up the night sky like a wrong-way comet, headed for the heavens instead of the Earth. Even the ground seemed to tremble. It was a glorious sight, but there was also a tinge of sadness, because we knew it was the last one.
But now, we can go back.
On January 14, 2004 in a speech at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C, President Bush set the goal of returning man to the Moon by 2020. (NASA, Bush Vision) Unlike the original mission, we were going to stay. With a permanent and self-sustaining lunar colony, we would finally be in a position where the human race doesn’t have all its eggs in one basket. The base would also provide us with much easier access to the rest of our solar system.
The most expensive component of space exploration is not the technology and supplies required to survive off-planet, but the cost of lifting those items into space. The Earth has a relatively steep gravity-well and a thick atmosphere. The Moon, on the other hand, has more of a gravity-dimple than a well. It requires only 1/22 of the energy to launch a given mass off the Moon as it does off Earth, (googlelunarxprize.org) so the entire International Space Station could have been lifted off the Moon in a single Space Shuttle flight (assuming it could be packed into the cargo bay). What’s more, is that there would be about two hundred thousand kilograms of payload capacity to spare. Imagine what we could build in space with this kind of lift capacity. But wait, it gets better.
The lunar atmosphere is so tenuous that the entire atmosphere of the Moon would fit into a space the size of a basketball stadium at sea level pressure. (Zeilik p174) This means that we can ignore atmospheric drag and heating completely when launching or landing on the Moon. All of the acceleration and deceleration can occur near ground level, where we have virtually unlimited solar power. We don’t need spaceships or rockets; all we need is a container of some sort that can be accelerated and something to accelerate it with.
Linear accelerators have been the stuff of science fiction for decades. We use a form of the linear accelerator in our high-speed mag-lev trains. Think of an electric motor that has been split open on one side and laid out flat. Put the rotor at one end of the armature and apply power. What happens? The rotor, which would normally spin within the rotating magnetic fields of the armature, instead shoots across the room. This is called a linear motor and, when used to hurl projectiles, it is called a linear accelerator or railgun.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could just build a long linear accelerator up the side of a mountain on Earth and shoot our astronauts and all their toys into space? Electricity is a lot cheaper than rocket fuel, after all, but there is one problem—the atmosphere. The hypersonic speeds we would have to achieve to reach orbit would, unfortunately, cause our payload to disintegrate, and probably destroy the linear accelerator as well. That isn’t to say that a linear accelerator on Earth would have no value. It would. But we could probably only use it to replace the first stage of a rocket. That, in itself, could make it worth building.
On the Moon, however, we have essentially no atmosphere and a much lower escape velocity. One linear accelerator could send tons of material into space each day. If positioned properly, it could even send payloads directly into earth orbit, with only minor fuel expenditures at the other end. This is the path to space!
This same technology can be used to decelerate objects, but hitting a target as small as the mouth of a linear accelerator – at high speeds, and in a gravity-well – is beyond our current ability.
The Moon contains all the resources necessary for humans to live. Of these, the most important is water.
The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission uncovered significant water deposits when it impacted the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole on Oct. 9, 2009. (NASA LCROSS UPDATE) With water, many things become possible:
* Having a local source of water means we don’t have to ship it up from Earth.
* Water can be split into oxygen and hydrogen using electricity.
* Oxygen and hydrogen can be used as rocket fuel for transport and exploration, while the oxygen alone can be used for breathing. Hydrogen that can’t be used locally can be shipped back to low Earth orbit, and even be de-orbited for use as rocket fuel.
* Water can be used to grow plants, which will provide food for the colonists, convert the CO2 they expel back into oxygen, and hydrate the air.
* Plants give us the option of raising animals for food and pleasure (pets).
* Assuming we can find suitable rock, water will also allow us to make cement.
* Because of water, we can have a natural and redundant ecology that is not prone to equipment failure. This will make living on the Moon safer than living on Earth.
Where will we live on the Moon? Underground is the safest place, though my guess is that eventually we will have city-sized domes. Until then, we will have to dig a lot of tunnels, or we might borrow technology developed during the cold war. Operation Plowshare was an attempt to use nuclear weapons for enormous construction projects. One of the experiments was to create a large cavity underground by exploding a nuclear weapon at the bottom of a deep shaft. This worked to a point, but the top of the chamber always caved in. There were also concerns about radiation contaminating the ecosystem. (AEC Plowshare.pdf) But with only one-sixth of the Earth’s gravity to contend with and no ecology to speak of, this technique has a good chance of succeeding on the Moon. If it does, then what can we do with all that living space?
Would you like to learn to fly? With small, strap-on wings and Earth-normal air density, any healthy person should be able to fly on the Moon. I envision a large, multi-tier city, with parks, farms and wildlife, built in an underground bubble that was created by a nuclear explosion and powered by the abundant solar energy found on the Moon. And, yes, you will be able to fly.
This is, admittedly, a best-case scenario, but everything I’ve mentioned should be doable with predictable advances in technology.
What about people who are born on the Moon? Without any actual test-subjects, it is impossible to say, but the likelihood is that they will never be able to withstand the crushing weight of Earth’s gravity. They will forever be barred from visiting their ancestral home. They should, however, be able to withstand the gravity of Mars as well as any other planet, moon, or asteroid that we are likely to colonize. Until we find a less expensive way to ship people off the earth, these native Lunarians will be our primary explorers. I would call that a fair trade for never being able to return home.
I’ve established that we can get to the Moon and that we not only can survive, but thrive once we get there. But why should we bother? Low Earth orbit (LEO) is crowded now. Every country that can put a firecracker under a payload is sending rockets into space. The United States alone, however, has the capability to colonize the Moon. We should do it for national pride, for technological gain, and for bragging rights. We should go because, should any catastrophe befall the Earth, America will live on. Our genes, our technology, and our way of life will be preserved. Once we have established a permanent and self-sustaining lunar colony, we open the door to the entire solar system. The American flag is the only flag ever raised by humankind on another celestial body. Let’s make it the first flag raised on the rest of them.
How do we make it happen? The only thing missing from the equation at this point is funding. The current administration loves to spend money, but it has yet to approve funding to continue Bush’s dream. Call or write your congressman. Let your senators know that, if they can authorize nearly a trillion dollars to bail out a bunch of greedy bankers, they can spare $30 billion a year to keep this dream alive.
Basic research always pays off. We are still reaping the technological benefits gained during the space race. Every electronic device and many of the advanced materials we use today have their roots in the space program. If we want to remain the technological leaders of the world, we have to keep developing new technology. We might as well go to the Moon while we are at it.
WORKS CITED:
(AEC Plowshare.pdf)
(googlelunarxprize.org)
(NASA – Bush Vision)
(NASA LCROSS)
(Wikipedia Apollo 11)
(Zeilik) “Astronomy: the evolving universe” isbn 0 521 80090-0
