If You Could Cause Someone to Land on the Moon Tomorrow by Sending NASA $5 Today, Would You Do it?

On 8/7/2010 6:45 PM, Hop wrote:


Which explains why the European exploration of the Americas was such a
spectacular failure.

You know, that's fun to consider.
Imagine North and South America without:
1. Gold.
2. Silver.
3. Emeralds.
4. Tobacco.
5. Beavers.
6. Sugar cane for making rum.
How long do you figure it would have been before European powers
established permanent colonies on the two continents?
The whole point of the colonization was to make a profit.
And if all the western hemisphere had to offer was popcorn, that would
have taken quite some time.
Now, what are you going to bring back from the Moon or Mars to Earth
that's worth the cost of obtaining it via colonization of either of
those worlds?
About the only thing anyone can come up with is Helium 3 from the Moon
for fusion reactors.
But ground-based solar arrays can generate equal amounts of electrical
power for far less cost than going that route (or a SPS constellation
for that matter.)
Same goes for metal from the asteroids; by the time you get the metal
processed, decelerate it to bring it to Earth's orbit, and decelerate it
again to get it down to Earth's surface, you are talking very expensive
metal indeed...nickel-iron far higher priced than gold per ounce...which
is really strange, given how much of Earth's total mass is made out of
the molten nickel-iron in its core.
The concept of: "There's lots of water ice on the Moon...therefore we
can build permanent colonies there" ignores the fact that there is a
hell of a lot of water ice in Antarctica also, and so far giant cities
haven't sprung up there, despite the advantages over the Moon of a
breathable atmosphere, far less radiation from solar storms and UV
light, and the fact you can get there in a C-130 rather than a rocketship.

Pat

On 8/7/2010 8:27 PM, Hop wrote:

Sheets of ice at least two meters thick.

600 million tonnes at the lunar north pole.

Which would be great if these were proven reserves, and not based on
estimates by NASA.
Like I said, when they put a lander down in one of those sunless polar
craters, and it drills a core sample up of two-meter-thick water ice,
that's when you can get some handle on how much is there, if any.
Up to that point, this is all based on speculation.
I want to see the actual ice; not some radar reflections and hydroxile
spectra.

Pat

On Aug 8, 3:05 am, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 8/7/2010 6:45 PM, Hop wrote:

Which explains why the European exploration of the Americas was such a
spectacular failure.

You know, that's fun to consider.
Imagine North and South America without:
1. Gold.
2. Silver.
3. Emeralds.
4. Tobacco.
5. Beavers.
6. Sugar cane for making rum.
How long do you figure it would have been before European powers
established permanent colonies on the two continents?
The whole point of the colonization was to make a profit.

And the Chinese fleet visited also visited regions with natural
resources. (Africa, for example).

But, according to you, the Chinese didn't make a profit because
there's no money to be made when an advanced culture meets a primitive
one.

This ridiculous theory would predict the Spaniards would enjoy no
profit from their interaction with the Aztecs.

And if all the western hemisphere had to offer was popcorn, that would
have taken quite some time.
Now, what are you going to bring back from the Moon or Mars to Earth
that's worth the cost of obtaining it via colonization of either of
those worlds?
About the only thing anyone can come up with is Helium 3 from the Moon
for fusion reactors.
But ground-based solar arrays can generate equal amounts of electrical
power for far less cost than going that route (or a SPS constellation
for that matter.)
Same goes for metal from the asteroids; by the time you get the metal
processed, decelerate it to bring it to Earth's orbit, and decelerate it
again to get it down to Earth's surface, you are talking very expensive
metal indeed...nickel-iron far higher priced than gold per ounce...which
is really strange, given how much of Earth's total mass is made out of
the molten nickel-iron in its core.
The concept of: "There's lots of water ice on the Moon...therefore we
can build permanent colonies there" ignores the fact that there is a
hell of a lot of water ice in Antarctica also, and so far giant cities
haven't sprung up there, despite the advantages over the Moon of a
breathable atmosphere, far less radiation from solar storms and UV
light, and the fact you can get there in a C-130 rather than a rocketship.


What's this got to do with you notion: "the reason they couldn't find
much to trade for is that they were the most culturally advanced
civilization on the planet at the time, and wherever they went it was
heading downhill in a cultural and artistic sense."

Again, if such interactions aren't profitable, how did the Europeans
get a profit from trading with the new world?

I was criticizing your flawed model of history. Not sure that you got
that.

Your wall of words above doesn't defend your theory on the Chinese
fleet's failure.

On Aug 8, 12:27*am, Hop wrote:
On Aug 7, 4:30 pm, lorad wrote:

On Aug 7, 4:22 pm, Hop wrote:

The various links you've posted do indeed give evidence the moon has
water. But, while there's more water than earlier thought, it's still
quite dry. None of the those links show water in exploitable
quantities.

I don't know how you can avoid the obvious.
MASSIVE amounts of water are there to be exploited.

Yes, there probably a 600 million tonnes at the north pole. 2 meter
thick sheets.

Reread my posts, this time for comprehension.

If you don't think that .16 percent of rock ore produced water isn't
significant.. there is little else that can be said.

Here are the three links you posted:http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...-amount-water/
andhttp://abcnews.go.com/Technology/water-moon-scientists-found/story?id....

The first two talk about McCubbins' notion that lunar magma harbors 16
parts per billion water. While 16 ppb would very much change models of
how the moon was formed, it's pretty hard to mine.

The third one talks about "only a small amount of water and only in
the form of molecules stuck to soil", a quart per tonne as you say.
1.6 parts per 1000. This is 100,000 times the 16 ppb figure McCubbins
gives. There might be more water on the lunar surface due to the sun's
hydrogen interacting with the oxygen rich lunar minerals.

But a quart per ton is difficult to mine. This is drier than the
Sahara desert.

But there are likely richer water deposits than 1.6 parts per 1000. I
will repost these links:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mi...-north-pole-of...

Or you can just google this: 600 million tonnes ice moon

That will give you a whole boat load of articles on the discovery.

Sadly a lot of people conflate the earlier probe findings and
McCubbins' with the very dramatic Chandrayaan-1 findings released
March, 2010.

Once again:

Sheets of ice at least two meters thick.

600 million tonnes at the lunar north pole.

Please stop posting those articles about 1.6 parts per 1000. Or 16
parts per billion. Rather, post links to articles of two meter thick
sheets of ice.

Once again:

Sheets of ice at least two meters thick.

600 million tonnes at the lunar north pole.

Got it?

Go argue with the authors of the articles or the principals.
I have no desire to engage in competitive pedantry with you.

All I know is that one quart of available h2o per ton of surface
material is a large amount and sufficient to supply a lunar base.

On Aug 8, 6:05*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 8/7/2010 6:45 PM, Hop wrote:

Which explains why the European exploration of the Americas was such a
spectacular failure.

You know, that's fun to consider.
Imagine North and South America without:
1. Gold.
2. Silver.
3. Emeralds.
4. Tobacco.
5. Beavers.
6. Sugar cane for making rum.
How long do you figure it would have been before European powers
established permanent colonies on the two continents?
The whole point of the colonization was to make a profit.
And if all the western hemisphere had to offer was popcorn, that would
have taken quite some time.
Now, what are you going to bring back from the Moon or Mars to Earth
that's worth the cost of obtaining it via colonization of either of
those worlds?
About the only thing anyone can come up with is Helium 3 from the Moon
for fusion reactors.

The point is that you really don't know what's available until you
actually go there and find out.

If the point of 2 billion years of evolution was to remain snug and
secure, nothing would have evolved beyond the clam-bivalve state of
life - waiting for the next cosmic oil spill to come along.

PS: I misread your notes re the great chinese fleet - somehow equating
it with the spanish armadas. You were correct, there is no record of
the chinese fleet having made a profit.

On Aug 8, 6:17*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 8/7/2010 8:27 PM, Hop wrote:

Sheets of ice at least two meters thick.

600 million tonnes at the lunar north pole.

Which would be great if these were proven reserves, and not based on
estimates by NASA.
Like I said, when they put a lander down in one of those sunless polar
craters, and it drills a core sample up of two-meter-thick water ice,
that's when you can get some handle on how much is there, if any.
Up to that point, this is all based on speculation.
I want to see the actual ice; not some radar reflections and hydroxile
spectra.

Pat

Like I said, the only way to know - is to go there.

On Aug 7, 7:45*pm, Hop wrote:
On Aug 7, 6:00 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:

Which raises a very interesting point; the reason they couldn't find
much to trade for is that they were the most culturally advanced
civilization on the planet at the time, and wherever they went it was
heading downhill in a cultural and artistic sense.
But assume for a moment that that wasn't the case; they set out and ran
into some sort of civilization more advanced than they were.
Their first concern would have been that that superior civilization was
going to realize that a nation that could build a fleet like that was
very rich indeed, and show up on their doorstep with an army on _their_
ships to invade China.
So it was a lose-lose proposition; either you find only more backward
cultures that don't have much of worth to trade for, or you find
something that is more advanced than you are, and have what started out
as trade end up as invasion.
Pat

Which explains why the European exploration of the Americas was such a
spectacular failure.

It was for the Indians.

On 8/8/2010 7:53 AM, Hop wrote:
How long do you figure it would have been before European powers
established permanent colonies on the two continents?
The whole point of the colonization was to make a profit.

And the Chinese fleet visited also visited regions with natural
resources. (Africa, for example).

They got ivory from Africa, but the fleet was god-awful expensive to
run; the ivory was nice, but it wasn't _that_ nice.
Same could be said for the spices of the Indian Ocean.
I don't know what exactly they expected to find that would make the
fleet profitable, but whatever it was, they never found it.


But, according to you, the Chinese didn't make a profit because
there's no money to be made when an advanced culture meets a primitive
one.

This ridiculous theory would predict the Spaniards would enjoy no
profit from their interaction with the Aztecs.

They were just out to steal the Aztec, Mayan, and Inca gold, silver, and
emeralds; there was a finite supply of that to be easily had, and once
it was used up things got a lot less profitable, as from that point on
the stuff had to be mined, not just stolen, and a lot of the mining was
done with slave labor.
Outside of "Robinson Crusoe On Mars", slave labor is going to be
difficult to find on other planets.
At least the English and French realized that agricultural produce (as
well as beaver pelts) were a renewable resource, though one notes that
other than cotton this produce consisted mainly of rum and tobacco, so
they were basically living as drug pushers.
The Ming Fleet and Columbus comparisons to space travel are faulty; The
Chinese fleet cost to much to continue operating, and inversely, the
Columbus expedition cost the Spanish almost nothing to mount, so if it
flopped it wouldn't be a major problem (and until the scent of gold and
jewels was detected emanating from Mesoamerica, the whole thing was
considered pretty much a failure, as it did not offer a route to the
Orient.)


What's this got to do with you notion: "the reason they couldn't find
much to trade for is that they were the most culturally advanced
civilization on the planet at the time, and wherever they went it was
heading downhill in a cultural and artistic sense."

Again, if such interactions aren't profitable, how did the Europeans
get a profit from trading with the new world?

Drugs made from produce grown by slave labor, cotton, and dead beavers.
And the beaver end of things went ker-plunk when beaver fur hats went
out of fashion.


I was criticizing your flawed model of history. Not sure that you got
that.

Your wall of words above doesn't defend your theory on the Chinese
fleet's failure.

Well, like I wrote before, read the book "When China Ruled The Seas";
it's all explained in there in detail.
The whole concept was seriously flawed from the get-go; first you send
out some small exploration ships to see what's out there, and if you
find something worthy of more effort, then you build the big ships and
send them to the place or places you've found.
The Ming approach was to build this big fleet and then hope you would
find something that made it all worthwhile, rather if like Columbus had
set out westward with half of the Spanish Navy in hopes of finding
something interesting.

Pat

On 8/8/2010 11:43 PM, lorad wrote:


All I know is that one quart of available h2o per ton of surface
material is a large amount and sufficient to supply a lunar base.

Depends how easy it is to extract it.

Pat

On 8/8/2010 11:53 PM, lorad wrote:

PS: I misread your notes re the great chinese fleet - somehow equating
it with the spanish armadas. You were correct, there is no record of
the chinese fleet having made a profit.

I was re-reading the book last night and at least figured out what they
were trying to do with the big fleet
Surprisingly, one of the purposes of it was identical to the reason
Columbus sailed: to screw over the Arab and Persian merchants operating
their shipping routes in the Indian Ocean.
Columbus wanted to find a direct route to China and India, so that goods
from the Orient could be brought directly to Europe without having to go
through the Islamic merchants that stood between the two regions, and
were charging a large mark-up on the goods as middle-men.
China wanted to find the source of all those goods they were also buying
from the same group of merchants (they knew the ivory and gems were
coming out of Africa, but not exactly where in Africa they were coming
from)who they also suspected of charging a big mark-up in prices.
Besides which, there was the prestige and intimidation factor of the big
trading fleet (this really does resemble the space race, doesn't it?)
The Emperor who had the fleet built thought he was the most powerful
ruler on the whole planet...and maybe he was by numbers of people in his
kingdom...and he thought everyone else should realize that that was the
situation also.
And having the trading armada show up reminded people that those ships
could show up one day loaded with troops rather than trade goods.
The fleet only made seven major voyages total before being abandoned,
and the majority of what it did bring back ended up in The Forbidden
City in the new capital at Beijing, and the hands of the eunuch
faction's supporters of the trading idea.
While the imperial court was getting rich, between the fleet and the
constant wars of imperial expansion that the Emperor was fighting the
country was going slowly bankrupt (also sounds a bit familiar) It didn't
get on its feet again till another very short-lived emperor had come and
gone, and his successor stopped the wars and concentrated on agriculture
as the basis of the country's wealth rather than foreign trade...as the
Confucian faction had suggested all along in opposition to the eunuchs.

Pat