Science

Creating A Moon Base is a horrible idea: Lets Do It!

Science fiction has usually always portrayed colonising the moon as something out of our modern reach, but what if I were to say that with our technology in 2022 we could successfully set up a permeant moon base? The main problem is funding. To set it up, it will need and investment of 20-40 billion US dollars over the course of 10 years. For this, we will assume that we have all the funding we need. Colonization in the past has had 3 common phases: 1. The explorers sent by governments set foot on the new region, plant a flag, stay for a few days then leave. 2. Semi permanent outposts are set up, some dying out and some surviving, but still heavily reliant on the home nation. 3. After that, permanent city's are set up, almost always exporting goods for the benefit of the home nation until there is some sort of revolution resulting in independence. On the moon, the first phase started 65 years during the Apollo mission. Before the colony can become self-sufficient, it needs time to grow. The best spot to set up a base is near the lunar artic poles, where days and nights are 6 months long. This means that we can use reusable rockets to land, set up, stay for 6 months while solar panels work, then leave and come back when its day again. Another advantage to the the lunar poles is the ice, which can be melted down and used in hydroponics (a process where plants are fully grown in water, not soil). Another idea which can be utilised is growing fish in the same water as the plants, as a more mixed diet could be an amazing boost to the astronauts having to spend 6 months in a pressurized metal tube on the moon with only 4 or 5 other people. Once the colony has been established, the next people to come will probably be engineers, builders, and contractors sent by companies and governments. The moon is rich in rare metals, and will be viewed as a massive profit by big business. Two of these people will result in a breakthrough, not scientific, but social: the first baby in space. The big question after this is about national identity: will the baby take the nationality of their parents, or be the first of a new nation, the moon. And when treaties about space and inevitably rewritten, will the colonists get a say. And when that happens, will there be independence...?


Elon Musk's Crazy Idea to Get 1 Million People on Mars by 2050

(Credit to RealLifeLore on YouTube who's video I viewed and summarised. Go watch his video .)

Introduction

Elon Musk is no stranger to Twitter. He ranks 33 on total followers, just below NASA itself. But while Elon posts lots of silly memes on there, its also a great tool to get inside his head. Like how recently when he was asked by a follower if he was planning to get 1 million people on Mars by 2020. He replied with yes. But while Elon Musk has just become the richest human on Earth and has the largest amount of resources, its hard to believe that he would be able to do this incredible feat. 2050 is now less than 30 years away and a million people is a lot of humans. That would be like cutting Austin, Texas out of the ground and transporting it to Mars, not to mention the inhabitants would have to survive the trip and Mars, not to mention the whole city would have to be mainly self-sufficient as Mars on average is nearly 225 MILLION miles away. So how could he do it?

The Logistics

First lets to about how to get there. The main rocket used would be Space-X's newest space ship, Starship. This is a fully reusable, heavy lift rocket that has been under development since 2018 and is still in prototype. It consists of two main parts: the Super Heavy Booster (the bottom part) and the Starship itself (the top part). Once ready and on launchpad it will stand at a whopping 122 meters tall and weigh 150 tons (without fuel or cargo), the largest rocket ever built. Furthermore it will be 3 times more powerful than the Saturn V2 rockets that brought NASA astronauts to the moon several decades ago and will be capable of  carrying over a 100 tons of cargo into orbit and further to Mars. Now your thinking great, why aren't we already blasting willing participants of to Mars. Well, the problem is that because you need to so much fuel getting out of orbit, after the lower sections runs out of fuel and is detached from the rocket to land back on Earth, you'll need another smaller rocket which  is like a huge fuel tank that blasts off and attaches to the rocket to give it enough fuel to get to Mars. Another matter to complicate things is that Mars has a different orbit to Earth called and eccentric orbit which is far from a circle. Because of this there's only a short travel time between Earth and Mars which occurs once every 26 months. Now lets assume we did this all. We conquered these challenges. Humans are now the masters of the stars. Well, back to that "short time frame" thing earlier. Elon plans to from the year 2025 to send 1000 rockets to Mars every time frame. Because the rockets can carry 100 people each and there are 12 time frames from 2025 to 2050, we would crush this milestone. Or we would if the average weight comparison for luggage if 10 to 1 on actual passengers. This will bring the amount of people from 1.2 million to 120 thousand.

Conclusion

So unfortunately this isn't possible from a simulation of the future perspective. But it still might be possible if we launch more ships every time as our knowledge improves. Leave your suggestions and opinions in the comment section and Ill see you tomorrow.