Bad Timing of His "Time to Go Back to the Moon" Editorial

Clearly the coronavirus crisis is now a grave international problem. The number of people infected has now increased beyond 125,000, and is rapidly growing. You can use this page to track the current status of the virus. Thankfully in China the growth of the virus seems to have leveled off. But in countries other than China, the virus seems to be spreading at an alarming rate.  When I click on the "Daily Cases" subtab at the bottom right of this page, I see a recent growth of new cases that looks very alarming.  If I look out my window, I see a significant fraction of people wearing face masks.  The National Guard has been called out to help check the spread of the coronavirus from nearby New Rochelle, New York.  The stock market has now plunged to become a bear market, largely because of the coronavirus.  Today the World Health Organization officially declared the coronavirus to be a global pandemic. 

But today the web site of CNN published an editorial by Roger Launius, one that fails to even mention the coronavirus.  The title of Roger's badly-timed editorial is this: "It's time for us to go back to the moon -- and stay there." Roger fails to make a compelling case for any such thing, and this could hardly be a  worse time for proposing that we spend 30 billion dollars on a lunar base, money that is needed for things such as fighting the spread of deadly viruses here on Earth. 

The first paragraph of Roger's editorial is pure nostalgia. He reminisces about listening to Neil Armstrong's moonwalk on a car radio. Such nostalgia will appeal only to those of his readers who are old-timers.  In the next paragraph Roger claims that we should create a permanant lunar base "to learn more about the cosmos and to further our goal of becoming a multi-planetary species." But we won't actually learn much of anything more about the cosmos by building a permanent base on the moon. We already know practically all there is to know about the moon, which is a dull, boring, lifeless rock.  Since the moon is not actually a planet, and since a permanent lunar base would have only a small number of inhabitants, we would not really be furthering a goal of becoming a "multi-planetary species" by creating a permanent lunar base for a small number of people. 

Roger claims that a lunar base could lead to "a host of discoveries in astronomy, Earth observation, materials science, pharmaceuticals and biomedical research," but gives us no details to back up these far-fetched claims. It's true that the moon is a good place for astronomical observations. But for much less than the cost of building and shipping a telescope to the moon and keeping it manned by astronomers living on the moon, you can build an unmanned telescope such as the Hubble Space Telescope that floats in orbit above our planet. An approach such as the Hubble Space Telescope is a tried-and-true approach, so why not stick with that, rather than trying some far-more-expensive lunar telescope that would probably give you much less "bang for the buck"?  As for "materials science, pharmaceuticals and biomedical research," research in such areas can be done far more effectively on Earth than on some base on the moon. 

Roger tells us, "Should a medical emergency take place, researchers could be rescued relatively easily, unlike on Mars where it would take months to complete a rescue mission."  But it would be vastly less expensive and safer to provide emergency medical care to researchers if they were doing their research here on Earth rather than on the moon.  Roger tells us, "By establishing a base on the moon, we could also further the development of low-cost energy and other technologies by using space as a proving ground for new concepts and hardware that could be used not only on the moon but also on Earth." Yes, new technology can be tested on the moon, but it is a hundred times less expensive to test such technology here on Earth.  Roger also tells us that a lunar base "could also begin the process of building a base for nuclear weapons that could be used to destroy near-Earth asteroids and other threats to our planet." He provides no details supporting any claim that we would be safer from the very remote danger of near-Earth asteroids by putting nuclear weapons on the moon as opposed to our own planet.  I doubt whether any of us would feel safer once launchable nuclear weapons were installed on the moon, as we would wonder about whether such weapons would ever be used against our planet. 

Roger thinks that building a base on the moon is "how we'll take our next great step and learn more about both the universe and humanity." But we won't learn anything more about humanity by building a base on the lifeless rock that is the moon. As for learning about the cosmos, our astronomers are already scheduled to get next year a gigantic gift: the 10-billion-dollar James Webb Space Telescope. That should keep them busy for many years, so why build them a moon base to house some other telescope?

Our limited science dollars should be spent mainly on things related to public health and safety, including new science that helps reduce the grave peril of global warming, and new science to reduce threats such as the threat of global pandemics.  Science dollars that do not directly improve or affect the health or safety of humans should be spent mainly on answering questions related to life and mind, the type of questions that the average person has some interest in.  We should not be spending tens of billions of dollars to answer esoteric "lifeless matter" questions unrelated to life and mind, questions that only a tiny clique of specialists care about (questions such as the precise details of lunar geology).   

A lifeless rock unworthy of much further attention

The Prospects of Colonizing the Skies of Venus

Ken Kalfus has written a long post called the The Folly of Mars, trying to throw cold water on the idea of exploring and colonizing Mars. But don't worry, space enthusiasts. Even if there are difficulties in colonizing Mars, there is another local possibility: colonizing Venus.

The idea of colonizing Venus may seem crazy to any person familiar with the basic facts about the planet. The surface of the planet is insanely hot (about 735 degrees Kelvin), so hot that it would quickly kill any human who tried to walk on it, even if he had a very good space suit. But there is another possibility. We could colonize the skies of Venus, by creating floating balloon cities there.

In this paper written by a NASA expert, it is proposed that we could create floating colonies about 50 kilometers above the surface of Venus. At this level the atmospheric pressure and gravity is roughly equal to that of Earth. Temperatures are also between 0 and 50 degrees Centrigrade (between 32 degrees and 122 degrees Fahrenheit), similar to temperatures on Earth.

The floating colonies would not be big balloons themselves, but would be suspended by giant balloons that might have an inner-tube structure, as shown in my visual below:

Floating colonists couldn't actually breathe the atmosphere of Venus, which is mainly carbon dioxide. But it would be easy to get oxygen for breathing, by extracting oxygen from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Such an operation could be easily powered by the abundant solar energy available on Venus, where it's easier to get solar energy.

What kind of life would colonists have in such a colony? The heavy winds on Venus would no doubt cause a frequent rocking of the colony. This would be something of a drawback. It might result in sea-sickness even worse than you would experience on a long sea voyage. Perhaps NASA would first need to develop some kind of super-effective sea-sickness tablet. Or perhaps it could create some type of fancy air-jet stabilization technology that would prevent the suspended colony from rocking too much.

I imagine it might be hard to recruit colonists for such a colony. I can only imagine the recruiting posters that NASA might produce:

Someone becoming a colonist would have to resign himself to living forever in some artificial space habitat, without ever again being able to walk on the surface of a planet. But there might be one cool perk for colonists. NASA could develop shuttle vehicles for transporting cargo between the different floating colonies. Imagine the fun of riding around in such a vehicle, shuttling between different floating Venus colonies. This might be the “hook” that could lure in many a potential thrill seeker.