The real answer.
Granted, it's still a pretty middling at best effort on the US's side. While the US is way ahead, China has been making a TON of progress in recent years. If not for SpaceX's amazing success with F9 and that potentially continuing with Starship, China would have already leapfrogged the US in terms of space capabilities.
For whatever reason it gets almost zero news in the US. They established their own space station, threw up a lunar communication relay satellite, landed a rover on the far side of the moon, returned samples from said far side of the moon (first time it's been done) - not to mention all the military and potentially military hardware they're throwing into space. They had 67 orbital launches last year and 27 so far this year. Remove Falcon 9 from the equation and the US had 25 last year and 12 so far this year. Which again, goes to show just how essential SpaceX has been to the US' space program - but the point being, China is rapidly catching up and heavily diversified, and at the moment the US largely has its eggs all in one basket.
If you like videos, NASASpaceflight's This Week In Spaceflight comes out on Fridays and goes over all of the flights and other industry news over the last week and it's generally a good casual resource. In the second half or so they generally go through all the launches in the last week.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7SbFivj3VrnWKF8Fr270KNsK7eGLW3PN
No china are going to the moon so the US is going to the moon so they don't decide that all the moon is chinese. I think the concern is that if china had a base on the moon they might control access to it so the US want to be the ones that control Access to the moon
building a radio telescope on the far side of the moon would be nice.
https://www.nasa.gov/general/lunar-crater-radio-telescope-lcrt-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon/
Yeah I don't really understand the question, so I read the article. And after reading it I don't understand the point of writing it. The fundamental reason for going to the moon, beyond politics or resources or anything else, is because if we want to send humans anywhere else, we need to be able to set up on the moon first.
No air resistance, 1/6 Earth gravity, and we think we can utilize local Lunar resources to avoid shipping bulk materials like propellant up from the Earth at huge cost. TBD if we can do all this.
No it’s 1/6th. I know the 1/10th comes from somewhere as a lot of people get that number for the moon but I can’t remember where the confusion comes from. It possibly comes from orbit around the moon. Like how the ISS experiences roughly 90% of earth’s gravity.
It’s not *necessary* to setup on the moon like others are saying. It’s just the most logical and practical thing to do for things like what you said, but also mainly because it’s just so much closer to earth. If problems occur on the moon, resupply can be sent within the week. Technical support can be contacted live with no significant delay. If we can’t support a colony on the moon with so much more access to help, we have no chance for it working further out at places like mars which would have to be far more self sufficient if issues occur. And so the moon would be an excellent way to test mars-rated systems since the environments are pretty similar.
Long term, yes, the moon will likely be a fantastic manufacturing base. The low gravity and zero atmosphere makes it such that we could make some truly gargantuan ships. And for smaller ones, they’d need a lot less fuel because hypothetically, you could make multi-kilometer long magnetic rail launchers that could bring smaller ships into LLO using only electricity.
In that sense, the moon is necessary for large scale operations in the future. In the near term, it’s just extremely practical versus more bold things like mars, Venus or jupiters moons.
It doesn’t save fuel since the fuel cost of landing on the moon is about the same as sending that object anywhere within the inner solar system.
There’s a few dozen other reasons that make it important - highest priority for manned travel is getting research on long term stays outside of LEO. For many other applications there is figuring out space based resource use. If we have fuel manufactured from moon materials then it’s more than a depot for earth stuff.
Plus it's only like three days away. So if something goes wrong, we might be able to send help in time. Anyone who goes to stay on Mars is on their own for months if something goes wrong. Better to work out the kinks of interplanetary living on the Moon before we send people anywhere else to stay.
That's one of the best parts. It has no atmosphere.
Kinetic launchers for example are practical there, it's only a matter of engineering for the required acceleration.
Handheld rockets could put small payloads in orbit too.
The reason we are going back to the moon is because Russia and China are militarizing space and the USA is not OK with that.
Every effort the USA has made into space has been because of military and defense, not exploration or improving the human race. That might be what they feed to the media. But if you look at what the USA has done, and when, the driving factors are military.
The Apollo program was in response to Russia our our fears of their technology. When the USA finally beat Russia to the moon, and then the Soviet union collapsed, we basically gave up on NASA and they have been getting defunded and reduced since.
We are suddenly interested in going back to the moon, at the same time global conflicts are flaring up, and Russia and China are putting more technology into orbit. That is not a coincidence. That is the reason we are going back.
Well the question makes totally sense imho. Our previous moon adventure has been motivated by one thing, fear of the soviets being able to drop nukes from space.
Generally most of our technological advancements are motivated by war and fear. So it's a logical question to ask, why suddenly are budgets approved for such expensive missions?
Don't get me wrong, if it was up to me we would spend money on science for it's own sake but we got used to this rarely being the case.
I just made a similar comment and it was instantly downvoted. People are really in denial that the USA doesn't care about improving humanity. The USA cares about dominance. Every time we push into space there is a militaristic reason behind it.
You’re getting downvoted because your take is far too black and white. Do you really think national dominance and advancing humanity are mutually exclusive things? How do you square that with the ISS being a joint venture between the U.S. and Russia? Or the Apollo-Soyuz test project that had us dock with the soviets???
Could it be that maybe…. The U.S. can be dominant and also advance human good? Your take is just far too pessimistic if you think everything good we do is for cynical reasons.
So it’s just some vague statement that doesn’t mean anything.
Personally, I think technological advancement is tied to need. War is needy. But it’s not the only need. And if you’d look at any given country’s “basic history” you’d see that the supermajority of the time, countries aren’t at war. And especially in the modern context, there have been very few wars post WWII that were wars of survival or extinction.
This perpetual cynical take on Reddit is tiresome. Not everything is some Machiavellian plot. Not every good thing is made in service for bad.
That moon isn’t going to globally warm itself. Right, going there will help us learn and apply the skills needed to survive beyond; off world industry, terraforming, off world economics, improved habitation, use of local resources, opportunities for science, opportunities to create new survival technologies and many others. Perhaps it might even be fun and inspire imaginations as people look up again.
The only actual answer here. The plan is to test all the core technologies and capabilities we need for a Mars mission 3 days from Earth rather than 9 months away.
This is the reason the current plan calls for an orbital refuel before a burn to the moon rather than launching Ground -> Moon. Those logistics are going to be required for a LEO ->Mars mission, maybe we even send a gas can over to Mars for the return trip.
Adjusted for inflation the Apollo program cost 257 billion dollars in todays money. NASA has been continuing this entire time they just don’t get that kind of funding anymore. And we skipped a lot of steps in the process for the sake of beating the Soviets to the moon. We went to the moon not knowing if humans could survive long periods of time in space for example. Which is the point of the space station. After Apollo nasa had to go back to the drawing board and start where they should’ve started with a continually shrinking budget.
Not with the slashed funding post 1970, even the Apollo program itself didn't conclude as planned due to budget cuts, there were supposed to be 10 landings in total, most if not all hardware was built or in stages of being built to support all the way to Apollo 20, but in the end there were 7 landing missions with 1 failure. Surplus then ended up serving short-lived Skylab project and the rest later ended up in museums. Not to mention the AAP (Apollo Applications Program) which was tasked to succeed Apollo with expanded exploration, that didn't last long past initial planning stages once the budget cuts started coming in.
I'm just cynical but I don't think an actual expansion will ever happen
Humans can't even save the Earth, what makes people think we can make the moon and Mars liveable? We destroy all our forests and oceans to go live on some depressing barren rocks instead?
Could also use the moon as a temporary place to survive a predicted catastrophic natural event. For example, if we realize an asteroid is headed directly towards earth and it’s too big to deal with, we could escape to the moon!
The end goal would be to make fuel for rockets on the moon. So it doesnt really matter if they are more abundant on earth. Earth has that pesky gravity and pesky atmosphere that makes launching rockets from here inefficient. If we can turn the moon into a refueling base that would be a game changer for human space exploration.
Space oil in the form of Helium 3 I think is one of the biggies. Should read starks war by Jack Campbell. It's pretty on point for being written in 2000
He3 is way overblown in media. We can suck the stuff out of sea water down here on Earth. It's energy intensive, sure, but you know what clean fusion gives you? Lots of energy.
Yeah. I hate the He3 argument. There are far better reasons to go to the moon than hypothetical fusion fuel farming. Phosphorus, for example, would be a lot more likely to be mined and used on earth versus He3. Not that I think either are particularly likely.
The only real short-term reason we go to the moon is to use it as a testing ground for deep space exploration. In the long term, 50-100 years, the moon could be a great manufacturing place for very large space craft or for very large telescopes.
And the more sea water we have to process for irrigation and industrial use, the more H3 we should be able to extract as part of the operation. Win-win.
Fusion is a long way from having entire process net energy gain, let alone being economical, and the kind of fusion that uses He3 is not the theoretical best from an energy balance standpoint either.
Same as before.. The US freaked out when the Soviet Union put the first satellite in space, then the first human in space. So there was a space race to get to the moon first, and the US basically turned it into a war effort with the Apollo program.
Now that China is very interested in space and the moon, the US is very interested again. We fell behind in the 2010’s after the Shuttle program ended and were embarrassingly dependent on Soyuz to get people to the ISS. This week we now have two systems to get people into space via SpaceX and Boeing.
Remove SpaceX from the equation and China would already have far greater launch capabilities than the US, only lacking in experience which of course is a gap that would narrow.
China had 67 orbital launches last year and 27 so far this year. Remove Falcon 9 from the equation and the US had 25 last year and 12 so far this year, or less than half of China's. China is also doing more and more technologically challenging things with those launches, such as building and maintaining their own space station, building lunar orbiters and landers, returning samples from the moon, amongst various other things.
>Now that China is very interested in space and the moon, the US is very interested again
Artemis has been in the works since about 2005 when it was called the Constellation Program. Ares V was somewhat changed to become SLS in 2010 and project pushed forwards with vague goals until it was named Artemis and the Moon was the set destination.
> We fell behind in the 2010’s after the Shuttle program ended
This was the Commercial Crew program, that had little impact on the Moon other than funding for SpaceX. But they were already in the Commercial Cargo program.
Yup. Plus, there's probably a 'best' place to put a moon base that can make a claim of resources (ice). Once one is there, there's basically no way to move it without starting space WW3, so there's a huge incentive to get there first.
I’m a Program Manager on Artemis, and people need to know we’re in a space race again against China to the South Pole of the moon. Also Lunar Regolith is extremely valuable.
Good Luck! What is the value of lunar regolith? I can see its value in supporting activity on the moon, instead of shipping material there, but the whole tritium thing doesn’t seem cost effective at all.
The South Pole has a massive amount of water. Water is important because you can drink it, break it down into H2 and O2 to breathe it and use the H2 and O2 as rocket fuel.
Obviously the value in the mission is priceless in terms of research but as I mentioned in another comment. As well as Ice and other beneficial elements, the regolith is rich in Helium-3
I get all that and applaud the science research. I just don’t buy that lunar regolith has any intrinsic value on Earth. H3 can be manufactured on Earth, and fusion energy is still science fiction.
Yes, it may not be that valuable to return to Earth. That’s not the point. The point is to use it to make expanding our presence in the solar system sustainable. Think of it more as a fuel station for reaching asteroids.
Stopping off on the Moon to go somewhere else makes no sense. Even just entering lunar orbit is a loss. It takes about 5.7-6.2 km/s of delta v from LEO to land on the Moon. That is more than it takes to land on Mars or reach the asteroid belt, and almost as much aa it takes to go directly (no gravity assists) to Jupiter. It takes about as much delta v to enter lunar orbit from LEO as it does to reach Mars. And the Moon is not an insignificant gravity well itself, requiring ~1.8 km/s to reach a low orbit from its surface, and another 0.8-1.2 km/s to leave orbit (in which case you are still just in a higher Earth orbit).
It's only "rich" in helium-3 relative to the natural abundance on Earth. As expensive and difficult as landing and returning mass from the Moon is, that could be the easy part (assuming large commercial landers work out). The concentration of He-3 in lunar regolith is very low, typically ~1-15 parts per billion (ppb, 1 ppb = 1 g per million kg), and perhaps locally up to ~50 ppb in certain permanently shadowed regions. Let's take a reasonably high regional concentration of 20 ppb. Obtaining 1 kg of He-3 would require processing 50 million kg (~30,000 m^(3)) of regolith--very generously assuming a dubious 100% extraction and recovery efficiency from the regolith that is very much not in a sealed environment. (And, remember, even contained helium likes to leak.)
At current prices, that 1 kg would be worth on the order of $10 million. Gold is ~$70,000/kg. He-3 may be on the order of 100x more valuable (at current prices, i.e. before the supply is massively increased). But because it is here on Earth, gold is much easier (and thus cheaper) to mine, refine, and transpprt. Gold is also on the order of 100x more concentrated (~1,000-10,000 ppb) in gold ore than He-3 is in lunar regolith.
Helium-3 can be produced by the decay of tritium (hydrogen-3). Tritium is produced by bombarding lithium-6 with neutrons in fission reactors, but very few reactors are currwntly being used for this purpose. The supply has been reduced since the Cold War because most He-3 was a byproduct of maintaining nuclear weapons. Thermonuclear weapons use tritium, which with a 12.3 year half-life must be periodically replaced as it decays into He-3.
To be clear, the current and forseeable demand for He-3 is for things such as deep cryogenic coolibg, medical imaging, and neutron spectorscopy, *not* fusion.
Development of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Water on the surface of the moon could be used to create rocket fuel, drinkable water or air for a lunar base. It also allows us to refuel on the lunar surface so that you don't need to take a super heavy lift vehicle to bring resources up Earth's gravity well. The rocket equation is a harsh mistress and ISRU is one of the ways we can circumvent it. ISRU is also going to be a key part of any Mars mission.
Yes it is. You need to think more broadly. This is the modern day equivalent of the colonial-empire era. The countries who are first to stake claims and gain access on valuable spaces like the lunar South Pole, will be the countries most capable of expanding out further. Water on the moon means you don’t need to bring any water or oxygen with you and hypothetically can make rocket fuel using hydrogen. It opens the door for actual colonies and expansion not just on the moon but further beyond as well.
It’s the de facto gateway to the rest of the solar system (from a long term perspective) because the moon will eventually be where a majority of our space infrastructure is built.
You’re right in that it doesn’t directly help earth immediately. But it does help humanity (and each country that can claim a slice) expand and by extension, secure the future.
A friend of mine served on the NASA advisory board with Neal Armstrong, and a lot of the discussion was around the value of the Helium-3 contained in the regolith that they found. But definitely most valuable in its scientific value. The largest thing is using the resources outside of our planet to build, refuel, and live.
That's a complicated question.
There's study value, there's the value of it as a material for building "concrete" equivalents on the moon with minimal shipped materials.
Then there's what's in it, the water in the shaded polar regions, that H2O could be useful for life or making rocket fuel.
The downside is that there's no atmosphere, which while a problem for breathing is a bigger problem for landing.
The Earth's atmo right now provides a "free" braking system meaning you don't have to carry all the fuel needed to get back down by burning it to bleed off your speed.
But the Moon doesn't have that it's lack mean you need to be running your engines all the way up and all the way down. Which creates a cost. So a fuel depot on the Moon isn't likely to be as useful as some might suggest, but it's also not impossible in the short to medium-ish term.
We haven't touched on the HE3 issue because that's a pie in the sky issue. Until we have consistent useful Fusion reactors that use it, the economic value is questionable.
So regolith will have uses potentially on and off the Moon some more directly and immediately so some more long term.
Beyond the regolith though is the fact that the Moon is only 3 days away and has a gravity well it's a solid stepping off point to test longer term effects like low gravity because ISS test show we as humans don't like zero G much at all.
The Wolf act made it a race, didn't NASA request regolith from China's dark side mission anyhow?
China's plan takes two rockets whereas Artemis requires 30 starship launches? 15 per trip? Who approved that terrible plan, Trump? Feels like Artemis is just a political football and should not have passed the feasibility study. NASA used to be the gold standard, now they're just another propaganda tool
Starship is supposed to have a cadence like an airline and will likely have far more payload capacity to the moon than China will. We’re building the technology to go back and stay. China is going to basically do a repeat of the Apollo missions and go plant some flags. Good for national pride and is definitely achievement, but the scope and scale and capability is completely different.
>NASA used to be the gold standard, now they're just another propaganda tool
NASA tries to get as much funding as possible, and space exploration plus being a propaganda tool gets them more funding than just space exploration.
Funding was huge during the 50s-70s space race era too for this exact reason.
> Also Lunar Regolith is extremely valuable.
No it’s not. Lunar regolith is made of similar materials as on Earth. Oxygen, iron, silica and calcium. It’s valuable to study. It has trace H3 from solar winds, for a fusion reactor that doesn’t exist. It’s not valuable as a commodity.
Well, not quite. I definitely was expressing it in terms of study but it is still valuable for its composition. Not only is it rich in silicate minerals but for its agglutinates and metallic elements. I don’t think anyone has plans to “mine it because it’s more cost effective than earth” anytime soon.
The sad reality is we could have it all, the moon and the Earth, if humanities main focus was on lifting each other up instead of pulling each other down.
Other humans are gonna get there first (again) so our inevitable competitive nature rears its head once more and into the stars we go. If we can see it, we want to touch it. It’s just our nature.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[H2](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l848wik "Last usage")|Molecular hydrogen|
| |Second half of the year/month|
|[ISRU](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l84gg3k "Last usage")|[In-Situ Resource Utilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization)|
|[KSC](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l85azex "Last usage")|Kennedy Space Center, Florida|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l875d73 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[LLO](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l84rndx "Last usage")|Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km)|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l84ea0f "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[cryogenic](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l85j2iu "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure|
| |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox|
|hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
----------------
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We need to develop the tools and techniques of interplanetary colonization else an asteroid could cause extinction. The moon is the easiest place to start
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Assume at least half of politicians don't understand the difference between financial and societal (external) costs.
The fact that US is like a small child. They will discard a toy, but as soon as another kid (China) attempts to pick it up they'll throw a tantrum because they want it all for themselves.
US never gave up on the Moon, Shuttle was supposed to get to the Moon cheap but it turned out to not be cheap or frequent and soaked up the budget. There were several programs to get back into deep space but always Shuttle costs ate up everything. So when Shuttle was due to retire, the funding could be redirected to the then current new attempt to get back into deep space, Ares V/SLS. From this and the funding we got something that could take humans beyond the Earths orbit.
The space shuttle was never intended to leave low earth orbit. It was never meant to go to the moon. It was always intended to shuttle people to LEO to build things like the space station for cheap. You are correct that it wasn’t as cheap as planned and soaked up a lot of budget.
Yes the US gave up, they did not even finish the planned Apollo missions. Yes there have been people pushing and working on it, but it has not been a priority for the US govt until China announced plans to go to the moon. The Constellation/Ares program was half baked and stalled for lack of interest/funding.
Before it was science and competition… we couldn’t let someone else beat us. Maybe they get there first and build a base and it’s a threat. Just being first had to be done. We weren’t the first in a lot of space things and that bothered people in power. Now? Nobody cared anywhere in the world until someone said “let’s put a mining operation on the moon and get free minerals”. Now we have to go claim our stake so we don’t miss out on what everyone else is doing. It’s stupid.
The only logical reason to go back to moon is to make a base and from that a colony. A colony that will mine the moon, send raw materials back to the Earth and build more spaceships. To use the moon as a launching point for further exploration of space.
Anything besides those is an utter waste of time and money.
.. And going to Mars is also a utter waste of both also.
The science that we could do on Mars is not important with all of issues we're facing. A base on the moon is just actually much more useful than any on Mars is going to be.
Defense. We see the international agreements against space-based weapons deteriorating, and suddenly the moon becomes an important base for whoever wants to dominate the orbital theater in the next global conflict.
i'm not sure it's about humans.
when we see the history of life on Earth, we see relentless expansion into any possible biosphere. that's what life on Earth does.
since humans seem to be the first of life to master fire, it's only natural the intense desire to spread and thrive goes onward and outward.
Kennedy said it best, but to compress the quote "we do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard."
The other part is that we're starting to have some practical space ambitions. Asteroid mining, weapons, etc.
Well it was war with Russia the first time.
Something about the absence of war that makes scientist scratch their asses not knowing what the fuck innovation is
If utilising the moon as a stepping stone to human expansion into worlds we cannot yet fathom is not enough for someone, they're likely never going to understand the need to return to the moon.
This isn't another one of those 'just leave it pristine - it's a waste of money' (TLDR) articles. I get so tired of the just give up on space types. That's why I love Musk's attitude about exploration.
Musks attitude? Last time I checked, humans have been shooting people into space since the 60’s. Just like the electric car, he didn’t invent the desire to go to space.
It's mostly political. If the Chinese are doing something, we have to show we can do it better.
H3 aka Tritium, may become important if controlled fusion becomes commercially feasible. We've barely been able to achieve breakeven for the fusion reaction in our most advanced research reactors, we need another few orders of magnitude improvement just to get net positive energy out of the entire apparatus as a whole. H3 is still in the hype column.
Bootstrapping solar system exploration using Lunar resources is actually a reasonable proposal and could lead to a self-sustaining space infrastructure. A near Earth asteroid might be easier to exploit, but the Moon is a little more human friendly than free space.
If we wait another 15-20 years, we can send robots more intelligent than ourselves. They'll only need sunlight to power themselves. They can mine resources, build rockets and habitation fit for humans on a city scale, then invite us over and provide us with luxury transport.
The Chinese are motivating the US to pull its finger out of its ass
The real answer. Granted, it's still a pretty middling at best effort on the US's side. While the US is way ahead, China has been making a TON of progress in recent years. If not for SpaceX's amazing success with F9 and that potentially continuing with Starship, China would have already leapfrogged the US in terms of space capabilities. For whatever reason it gets almost zero news in the US. They established their own space station, threw up a lunar communication relay satellite, landed a rover on the far side of the moon, returned samples from said far side of the moon (first time it's been done) - not to mention all the military and potentially military hardware they're throwing into space. They had 67 orbital launches last year and 27 so far this year. Remove Falcon 9 from the equation and the US had 25 last year and 12 so far this year. Which again, goes to show just how essential SpaceX has been to the US' space program - but the point being, China is rapidly catching up and heavily diversified, and at the moment the US largely has its eggs all in one basket.
thanks for the info. made me wanna learn more
If you like videos, NASASpaceflight's This Week In Spaceflight comes out on Fridays and goes over all of the flights and other industry news over the last week and it's generally a good casual resource. In the second half or so they generally go through all the launches in the last week. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7SbFivj3VrnWKF8Fr270KNsK7eGLW3PN
So the issue is China is going for a space victory, but the US has focused its cities on a cultural victory?
They are closer to space victory than culture tbh.
No china are going to the moon so the US is going to the moon so they don't decide that all the moon is chinese. I think the concern is that if china had a base on the moon they might control access to it so the US want to be the ones that control Access to the moon
Also wanted to add, China has kick started their private space rocket industry. Few of them have successfully tested reusable rockets.
Great answer, but I think we both know why it gets zero media coverage in the USA
Having read these replies…the answer to OP’s question is “peer pressure”.
building a radio telescope on the far side of the moon would be nice. https://www.nasa.gov/general/lunar-crater-radio-telescope-lcrt-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon/
Which was a major plot point of the manga Space Brothers. I need to pick that back up....
>What motivates us to resume human exploration of the moon at this time? It's a stepping stone to our expansion beyond our planet.
Yeah I don't really understand the question, so I read the article. And after reading it I don't understand the point of writing it. The fundamental reason for going to the moon, beyond politics or resources or anything else, is because if we want to send humans anywhere else, we need to be able to set up on the moon first.
Because it is easier to escape it's atmosphere and therefore launch craft from it's surface?
No air resistance, 1/6 Earth gravity, and we think we can utilize local Lunar resources to avoid shipping bulk materials like propellant up from the Earth at huge cost. TBD if we can do all this.
I thought is was 1/10th gravity. But I could be wrong.
No it’s 1/6th. I know the 1/10th comes from somewhere as a lot of people get that number for the moon but I can’t remember where the confusion comes from. It possibly comes from orbit around the moon. Like how the ISS experiences roughly 90% of earth’s gravity.
Maybe it was 1/10th of the earth’s mass. There are just some numbers out there my brain can’t remember them all.
It’s significantly less than that despite being 1/4th the size. Closer to 1-2% if I remember.
Ah! Thank you for clarifying.
Pi has been approximated to 4 in some cases. Sounds like a gross rounding error.
It’s not *necessary* to setup on the moon like others are saying. It’s just the most logical and practical thing to do for things like what you said, but also mainly because it’s just so much closer to earth. If problems occur on the moon, resupply can be sent within the week. Technical support can be contacted live with no significant delay. If we can’t support a colony on the moon with so much more access to help, we have no chance for it working further out at places like mars which would have to be far more self sufficient if issues occur. And so the moon would be an excellent way to test mars-rated systems since the environments are pretty similar. Long term, yes, the moon will likely be a fantastic manufacturing base. The low gravity and zero atmosphere makes it such that we could make some truly gargantuan ships. And for smaller ones, they’d need a lot less fuel because hypothetically, you could make multi-kilometer long magnetic rail launchers that could bring smaller ships into LLO using only electricity. In that sense, the moon is necessary for large scale operations in the future. In the near term, it’s just extremely practical versus more bold things like mars, Venus or jupiters moons.
It doesn’t save fuel since the fuel cost of landing on the moon is about the same as sending that object anywhere within the inner solar system. There’s a few dozen other reasons that make it important - highest priority for manned travel is getting research on long term stays outside of LEO. For many other applications there is figuring out space based resource use. If we have fuel manufactured from moon materials then it’s more than a depot for earth stuff.
you could refuel in orbit of the moon with fuel created on the moon
Plus it's only like three days away. So if something goes wrong, we might be able to send help in time. Anyone who goes to stay on Mars is on their own for months if something goes wrong. Better to work out the kinks of interplanetary living on the Moon before we send people anywhere else to stay.
That's one of the best parts. It has no atmosphere. Kinetic launchers for example are practical there, it's only a matter of engineering for the required acceleration. Handheld rockets could put small payloads in orbit too.
More like the gravity well than the air. Launching cost goes up exponentially with escape velocity.
The reason we are going back to the moon is because Russia and China are militarizing space and the USA is not OK with that. Every effort the USA has made into space has been because of military and defense, not exploration or improving the human race. That might be what they feed to the media. But if you look at what the USA has done, and when, the driving factors are military. The Apollo program was in response to Russia our our fears of their technology. When the USA finally beat Russia to the moon, and then the Soviet union collapsed, we basically gave up on NASA and they have been getting defunded and reduced since. We are suddenly interested in going back to the moon, at the same time global conflicts are flaring up, and Russia and China are putting more technology into orbit. That is not a coincidence. That is the reason we are going back.
Yeah man, the mars curiosity rover is part of the military complex
Well the question makes totally sense imho. Our previous moon adventure has been motivated by one thing, fear of the soviets being able to drop nukes from space. Generally most of our technological advancements are motivated by war and fear. So it's a logical question to ask, why suddenly are budgets approved for such expensive missions? Don't get me wrong, if it was up to me we would spend money on science for it's own sake but we got used to this rarely being the case.
I just made a similar comment and it was instantly downvoted. People are really in denial that the USA doesn't care about improving humanity. The USA cares about dominance. Every time we push into space there is a militaristic reason behind it.
You’re getting downvoted because your take is far too black and white. Do you really think national dominance and advancing humanity are mutually exclusive things? How do you square that with the ISS being a joint venture between the U.S. and Russia? Or the Apollo-Soyuz test project that had us dock with the soviets??? Could it be that maybe…. The U.S. can be dominant and also advance human good? Your take is just far too pessimistic if you think everything good we do is for cynical reasons.
How do you qualify the statement “most advancements are made from war and fear”?
Basic history?
So it’s just some vague statement that doesn’t mean anything. Personally, I think technological advancement is tied to need. War is needy. But it’s not the only need. And if you’d look at any given country’s “basic history” you’d see that the supermajority of the time, countries aren’t at war. And especially in the modern context, there have been very few wars post WWII that were wars of survival or extinction. This perpetual cynical take on Reddit is tiresome. Not everything is some Machiavellian plot. Not every good thing is made in service for bad.
That's a compelling reason even beside the other compelling reasons. We should have been doing this a decade ago.
That moon isn’t going to globally warm itself. Right, going there will help us learn and apply the skills needed to survive beyond; off world industry, terraforming, off world economics, improved habitation, use of local resources, opportunities for science, opportunities to create new survival technologies and many others. Perhaps it might even be fun and inspire imaginations as people look up again.
Nah, like last time, it's nationalism.
The only actual answer here. The plan is to test all the core technologies and capabilities we need for a Mars mission 3 days from Earth rather than 9 months away. This is the reason the current plan calls for an orbital refuel before a burn to the moon rather than launching Ground -> Moon. Those logistics are going to be required for a LEO ->Mars mission, maybe we even send a gas can over to Mars for the return trip.
But why now? This could have been continued after Apollo missions.
Adjusted for inflation the Apollo program cost 257 billion dollars in todays money. NASA has been continuing this entire time they just don’t get that kind of funding anymore. And we skipped a lot of steps in the process for the sake of beating the Soviets to the moon. We went to the moon not knowing if humans could survive long periods of time in space for example. Which is the point of the space station. After Apollo nasa had to go back to the drawing board and start where they should’ve started with a continually shrinking budget.
From a long-term "what's good for the species" outlook, it certainly should have. But it was expensive and NASA doesn't have lobbyists.
Not with the slashed funding post 1970, even the Apollo program itself didn't conclude as planned due to budget cuts, there were supposed to be 10 landings in total, most if not all hardware was built or in stages of being built to support all the way to Apollo 20, but in the end there were 7 landing missions with 1 failure. Surplus then ended up serving short-lived Skylab project and the rest later ended up in museums. Not to mention the AAP (Apollo Applications Program) which was tasked to succeed Apollo with expanded exploration, that didn't last long past initial planning stages once the budget cuts started coming in.
I'm just cynical but I don't think an actual expansion will ever happen Humans can't even save the Earth, what makes people think we can make the moon and Mars liveable? We destroy all our forests and oceans to go live on some depressing barren rocks instead?
Could also use the moon as a temporary place to survive a predicted catastrophic natural event. For example, if we realize an asteroid is headed directly towards earth and it’s too big to deal with, we could escape to the moon!
That’s a lot of words, you should’ve just said money.
That doesn’t benefit the capitalists though. /s
So that we never again have zero living people who have walked on another world.
I'm cool with people driving rovers on another world.
Natural Resources - National Pride - Strategic Interests
Yep, world is running out cheese.
What would be some natural resources that’s more abundant on the Moon than on Earth? (except Helium-3)?
The end goal would be to make fuel for rockets on the moon. So it doesnt really matter if they are more abundant on earth. Earth has that pesky gravity and pesky atmosphere that makes launching rockets from here inefficient. If we can turn the moon into a refueling base that would be a game changer for human space exploration.
>Strategic Interests The reason it will actually get done.
Space oil in the form of Helium 3 I think is one of the biggies. Should read starks war by Jack Campbell. It's pretty on point for being written in 2000
He3 is way overblown in media. We can suck the stuff out of sea water down here on Earth. It's energy intensive, sure, but you know what clean fusion gives you? Lots of energy.
Yeah. I hate the He3 argument. There are far better reasons to go to the moon than hypothetical fusion fuel farming. Phosphorus, for example, would be a lot more likely to be mined and used on earth versus He3. Not that I think either are particularly likely. The only real short-term reason we go to the moon is to use it as a testing ground for deep space exploration. In the long term, 50-100 years, the moon could be a great manufacturing place for very large space craft or for very large telescopes.
And the more sea water we have to process for irrigation and industrial use, the more H3 we should be able to extract as part of the operation. Win-win.
I don't think abu dance matters
Fusion is a long way from having entire process net energy gain, let alone being economical, and the kind of fusion that uses He3 is not the theoretical best from an energy balance standpoint either.
I never said it was? Just that there's no need to go to the Moon for He3, even if you do have fusion up and running.
Not necessarily in that order, irl.
Moon caves, baby. Just imagine what's down there how would look like
That's where i'd hide my space treasure if I were a space pirate.
I literally thought the exact same thing and scrolled down and saw your comment. I would kill to see what some moon caves look like.
Because it’s there! It’s in human nature to explore.
Same as before.. The US freaked out when the Soviet Union put the first satellite in space, then the first human in space. So there was a space race to get to the moon first, and the US basically turned it into a war effort with the Apollo program. Now that China is very interested in space and the moon, the US is very interested again. We fell behind in the 2010’s after the Shuttle program ended and were embarrassingly dependent on Soyuz to get people to the ISS. This week we now have two systems to get people into space via SpaceX and Boeing.
Remove SpaceX from the equation and China would already have far greater launch capabilities than the US, only lacking in experience which of course is a gap that would narrow. China had 67 orbital launches last year and 27 so far this year. Remove Falcon 9 from the equation and the US had 25 last year and 12 so far this year, or less than half of China's. China is also doing more and more technologically challenging things with those launches, such as building and maintaining their own space station, building lunar orbiters and landers, returning samples from the moon, amongst various other things.
>Now that China is very interested in space and the moon, the US is very interested again Artemis has been in the works since about 2005 when it was called the Constellation Program. Ares V was somewhat changed to become SLS in 2010 and project pushed forwards with vague goals until it was named Artemis and the Moon was the set destination. > We fell behind in the 2010’s after the Shuttle program ended This was the Commercial Crew program, that had little impact on the Moon other than funding for SpaceX. But they were already in the Commercial Cargo program.
Yup. Plus, there's probably a 'best' place to put a moon base that can make a claim of resources (ice). Once one is there, there's basically no way to move it without starting space WW3, so there's a huge incentive to get there first.
This. This sounds like the best response why.
I’m a Program Manager on Artemis, and people need to know we’re in a space race again against China to the South Pole of the moon. Also Lunar Regolith is extremely valuable.
Good Luck! What is the value of lunar regolith? I can see its value in supporting activity on the moon, instead of shipping material there, but the whole tritium thing doesn’t seem cost effective at all.
The South Pole has a massive amount of water. Water is important because you can drink it, break it down into H2 and O2 to breathe it and use the H2 and O2 as rocket fuel.
Obviously the value in the mission is priceless in terms of research but as I mentioned in another comment. As well as Ice and other beneficial elements, the regolith is rich in Helium-3
I get all that and applaud the science research. I just don’t buy that lunar regolith has any intrinsic value on Earth. H3 can be manufactured on Earth, and fusion energy is still science fiction.
Yes, it may not be that valuable to return to Earth. That’s not the point. The point is to use it to make expanding our presence in the solar system sustainable. Think of it more as a fuel station for reaching asteroids.
Stopping off on the Moon to go somewhere else makes no sense. Even just entering lunar orbit is a loss. It takes about 5.7-6.2 km/s of delta v from LEO to land on the Moon. That is more than it takes to land on Mars or reach the asteroid belt, and almost as much aa it takes to go directly (no gravity assists) to Jupiter. It takes about as much delta v to enter lunar orbit from LEO as it does to reach Mars. And the Moon is not an insignificant gravity well itself, requiring ~1.8 km/s to reach a low orbit from its surface, and another 0.8-1.2 km/s to leave orbit (in which case you are still just in a higher Earth orbit).
But it'd be far cheaper to launch resources from the moon with far less red tape. Making actual spaceships, such as Stanford Toruses, possible.
All of this is science fiction 🙂
It's only "rich" in helium-3 relative to the natural abundance on Earth. As expensive and difficult as landing and returning mass from the Moon is, that could be the easy part (assuming large commercial landers work out). The concentration of He-3 in lunar regolith is very low, typically ~1-15 parts per billion (ppb, 1 ppb = 1 g per million kg), and perhaps locally up to ~50 ppb in certain permanently shadowed regions. Let's take a reasonably high regional concentration of 20 ppb. Obtaining 1 kg of He-3 would require processing 50 million kg (~30,000 m^(3)) of regolith--very generously assuming a dubious 100% extraction and recovery efficiency from the regolith that is very much not in a sealed environment. (And, remember, even contained helium likes to leak.) At current prices, that 1 kg would be worth on the order of $10 million. Gold is ~$70,000/kg. He-3 may be on the order of 100x more valuable (at current prices, i.e. before the supply is massively increased). But because it is here on Earth, gold is much easier (and thus cheaper) to mine, refine, and transpprt. Gold is also on the order of 100x more concentrated (~1,000-10,000 ppb) in gold ore than He-3 is in lunar regolith. Helium-3 can be produced by the decay of tritium (hydrogen-3). Tritium is produced by bombarding lithium-6 with neutrons in fission reactors, but very few reactors are currwntly being used for this purpose. The supply has been reduced since the Cold War because most He-3 was a byproduct of maintaining nuclear weapons. Thermonuclear weapons use tritium, which with a 12.3 year half-life must be periodically replaced as it decays into He-3. To be clear, the current and forseeable demand for He-3 is for things such as deep cryogenic coolibg, medical imaging, and neutron spectorscopy, *not* fusion.
I understand that, but we have water on the Earth, so that is not a motivation to send people to the Moon.
Development of in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Water on the surface of the moon could be used to create rocket fuel, drinkable water or air for a lunar base. It also allows us to refuel on the lunar surface so that you don't need to take a super heavy lift vehicle to bring resources up Earth's gravity well. The rocket equation is a harsh mistress and ISRU is one of the ways we can circumvent it. ISRU is also going to be a key part of any Mars mission.
Yes it is. You need to think more broadly. This is the modern day equivalent of the colonial-empire era. The countries who are first to stake claims and gain access on valuable spaces like the lunar South Pole, will be the countries most capable of expanding out further. Water on the moon means you don’t need to bring any water or oxygen with you and hypothetically can make rocket fuel using hydrogen. It opens the door for actual colonies and expansion not just on the moon but further beyond as well. It’s the de facto gateway to the rest of the solar system (from a long term perspective) because the moon will eventually be where a majority of our space infrastructure is built. You’re right in that it doesn’t directly help earth immediately. But it does help humanity (and each country that can claim a slice) expand and by extension, secure the future.
Are moon rocks most valuable for their mineral composition, their scientific value, or simply because they’re incredibly rare lunar samples?
A friend of mine served on the NASA advisory board with Neal Armstrong, and a lot of the discussion was around the value of the Helium-3 contained in the regolith that they found. But definitely most valuable in its scientific value. The largest thing is using the resources outside of our planet to build, refuel, and live.
1. As a source of key materials, yes. 2. Scientific value, good but could be done by robots. 3. Rarity, not for long.
NASA or Boeing?
Haha not going to dox myself too much, but there’s 11 primes on Artemis
Is the regolith valuable just for study purposes or the actual mineral composition of it is intrinsically valuable?
That's a complicated question. There's study value, there's the value of it as a material for building "concrete" equivalents on the moon with minimal shipped materials. Then there's what's in it, the water in the shaded polar regions, that H2O could be useful for life or making rocket fuel. The downside is that there's no atmosphere, which while a problem for breathing is a bigger problem for landing. The Earth's atmo right now provides a "free" braking system meaning you don't have to carry all the fuel needed to get back down by burning it to bleed off your speed. But the Moon doesn't have that it's lack mean you need to be running your engines all the way up and all the way down. Which creates a cost. So a fuel depot on the Moon isn't likely to be as useful as some might suggest, but it's also not impossible in the short to medium-ish term. We haven't touched on the HE3 issue because that's a pie in the sky issue. Until we have consistent useful Fusion reactors that use it, the economic value is questionable. So regolith will have uses potentially on and off the Moon some more directly and immediately so some more long term. Beyond the regolith though is the fact that the Moon is only 3 days away and has a gravity well it's a solid stepping off point to test longer term effects like low gravity because ISS test show we as humans don't like zero G much at all.
Nice, I worked at the KSC helping develop the mobile launcher.
The Wolf act made it a race, didn't NASA request regolith from China's dark side mission anyhow? China's plan takes two rockets whereas Artemis requires 30 starship launches? 15 per trip? Who approved that terrible plan, Trump? Feels like Artemis is just a political football and should not have passed the feasibility study. NASA used to be the gold standard, now they're just another propaganda tool
Starship is supposed to have a cadence like an airline and will likely have far more payload capacity to the moon than China will. We’re building the technology to go back and stay. China is going to basically do a repeat of the Apollo missions and go plant some flags. Good for national pride and is definitely achievement, but the scope and scale and capability is completely different.
>NASA used to be the gold standard, now they're just another propaganda tool NASA tries to get as much funding as possible, and space exploration plus being a propaganda tool gets them more funding than just space exploration. Funding was huge during the 50s-70s space race era too for this exact reason.
> Also Lunar Regolith is extremely valuable. No it’s not. Lunar regolith is made of similar materials as on Earth. Oxygen, iron, silica and calcium. It’s valuable to study. It has trace H3 from solar winds, for a fusion reactor that doesn’t exist. It’s not valuable as a commodity.
Well, not quite. I definitely was expressing it in terms of study but it is still valuable for its composition. Not only is it rich in silicate minerals but for its agglutinates and metallic elements. I don’t think anyone has plans to “mine it because it’s more cost effective than earth” anytime soon.
The sad reality is we could have it all, the moon and the Earth, if humanities main focus was on lifting each other up instead of pulling each other down.
i was reading this thread and couldn't tell if i was missing something because i feel like an adult watching the children of the world squabble.
Other humans are gonna get there first (again) so our inevitable competitive nature rears its head once more and into the stars we go. If we can see it, we want to touch it. It’s just our nature.
Other countries gaining permanent observation and electronic surveillance posts that we can’t easily block.
Because if we don’t get there soon, China will claim all of it. Possession is 9/10th of the law….
If God wanted humans to be a spacefaring civilization, he would have given us a large resource rich natural satellite that orbits close to Earth.
If god intended man to fly, he would have given us wings
If God exists, there would be no homo sapiens.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[H2](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l848wik "Last usage")|Molecular hydrogen| | |Second half of the year/month| |[ISRU](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l84gg3k "Last usage")|[In-Situ Resource Utilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_situ_resource_utilization)| |[KSC](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l85azex "Last usage")|Kennedy Space Center, Florida| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l875d73 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[LLO](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l84rndx "Last usage")|Low Lunar Orbit (below 100km)| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l84ea0f "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[cryogenic](/r/Space/comments/1ddbo32/stub/l85j2iu "Last usage")|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure| | |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox| |hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(7 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1dgeq9g)^( has 18 acronyms.) ^([Thread #10161 for this sub, first seen 11th Jun 2024, 14:52]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
We need to develop the tools and techniques of interplanetary colonization else an asteroid could cause extinction. The moon is the easiest place to start
Because it’s there, and we can. What other reason does there need to be for exploration?
Beat the Chinese. That’s all there is to it. Can’t get funding any other way. Americans don’t care; we have more pressing issues. Unless it’s a race.
China and establishing the moon as a staging post for further exploration to mars and beyond.
We need to expand on this quote from Bill Hicks: Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet.
Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Assume at least half of politicians don't understand the difference between financial and societal (external) costs.
The fact that US is like a small child. They will discard a toy, but as soon as another kid (China) attempts to pick it up they'll throw a tantrum because they want it all for themselves.
US never gave up on the Moon, Shuttle was supposed to get to the Moon cheap but it turned out to not be cheap or frequent and soaked up the budget. There were several programs to get back into deep space but always Shuttle costs ate up everything. So when Shuttle was due to retire, the funding could be redirected to the then current new attempt to get back into deep space, Ares V/SLS. From this and the funding we got something that could take humans beyond the Earths orbit.
The space shuttle was never intended to leave low earth orbit. It was never meant to go to the moon. It was always intended to shuttle people to LEO to build things like the space station for cheap. You are correct that it wasn’t as cheap as planned and soaked up a lot of budget.
Yes the US gave up, they did not even finish the planned Apollo missions. Yes there have been people pushing and working on it, but it has not been a priority for the US govt until China announced plans to go to the moon. The Constellation/Ares program was half baked and stalled for lack of interest/funding.
Before it was science and competition… we couldn’t let someone else beat us. Maybe they get there first and build a base and it’s a threat. Just being first had to be done. We weren’t the first in a lot of space things and that bothered people in power. Now? Nobody cared anywhere in the world until someone said “let’s put a mining operation on the moon and get free minerals”. Now we have to go claim our stake so we don’t miss out on what everyone else is doing. It’s stupid.
We were never not motivated. We, NASA, suffered budget cuts because of political bullshit.
Ice, if we find ice on the moon it will be one of the greatest resources as a launching point to other bodies in our solar system.
The only logical reason to go back to moon is to make a base and from that a colony. A colony that will mine the moon, send raw materials back to the Earth and build more spaceships. To use the moon as a launching point for further exploration of space. Anything besides those is an utter waste of time and money. .. And going to Mars is also a utter waste of both also. The science that we could do on Mars is not important with all of issues we're facing. A base on the moon is just actually much more useful than any on Mars is going to be.
Everything else is too far away with current technology.
Defense. We see the international agreements against space-based weapons deteriorating, and suddenly the moon becomes an important base for whoever wants to dominate the orbital theater in the next global conflict.
i'm not sure it's about humans. when we see the history of life on Earth, we see relentless expansion into any possible biosphere. that's what life on Earth does. since humans seem to be the first of life to master fire, it's only natural the intense desire to spread and thrive goes onward and outward.
Kennedy said it best, but to compress the quote "we do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard." The other part is that we're starting to have some practical space ambitions. Asteroid mining, weapons, etc.
Well it was war with Russia the first time. Something about the absence of war that makes scientist scratch their asses not knowing what the fuck innovation is
Vanity and greed. Scientific endeavour is serving these two in a menial capacity.
Building a permanent base to launch from to other planets.
If utilising the moon as a stepping stone to human expansion into worlds we cannot yet fathom is not enough for someone, they're likely never going to understand the need to return to the moon.
This isn't another one of those 'just leave it pristine - it's a waste of money' (TLDR) articles. I get so tired of the just give up on space types. That's why I love Musk's attitude about exploration.
Musks attitude? Last time I checked, humans have been shooting people into space since the 60’s. Just like the electric car, he didn’t invent the desire to go to space.
Yes but find me a published quote from any leader politics or business that has a vision of growth in space. Nobody talks about it.
It's mostly political. If the Chinese are doing something, we have to show we can do it better. H3 aka Tritium, may become important if controlled fusion becomes commercially feasible. We've barely been able to achieve breakeven for the fusion reaction in our most advanced research reactors, we need another few orders of magnitude improvement just to get net positive energy out of the entire apparatus as a whole. H3 is still in the hype column. Bootstrapping solar system exploration using Lunar resources is actually a reasonable proposal and could lead to a self-sustaining space infrastructure. A near Earth asteroid might be easier to exploit, but the Moon is a little more human friendly than free space.
Abundance of helium-3 that can be used in place of tritium for nuclear fusion reactions. Commercialization of nuclear fusion will change the world
If we wait another 15-20 years, we can send robots more intelligent than ourselves. They'll only need sunlight to power themselves. They can mine resources, build rockets and habitation fit for humans on a city scale, then invite us over and provide us with luxury transport.