Moon Base Here We Come

My personal opinion is that deep space exploration (especially manned) will never become a reality until we colonize the moon. The lower gravity there makes manufacturing and launching space vehicles much more economical and effective. Constructing an orbital space station around the moon (where orbit could be achieved by rail gun), rather than around earth, would be much more sensible.

The only factor is what supplies have to be brought from Earth. There is lots of iron and oxygen on the moon, so carbon would have to be brought from earth for smelting and fuel. (There already is aluminum, silicon, magnesium, phosphorus, and sulfur on the moon.) Nitrogen would be needed for food and fuel. Probably lots of other minor elements as well such as tungsten, cobalt, and chromium.

But one thing can now be scratched off that list... probably the most important (being the most necessary for human life, and also the heaviest) on the list... is water. There is water on the moon.

So what does this mean now? Considering the amount of water that otherwise would need to carried to the moon (or manufactured there at great expense) and the price tag involved in that, the cost of setting up and maintaining a moon base (and manufacturing a deep space exploration enterprise on the lunar surface) has gone down quite a bit. (Scratch hydrogen off the list too.) The more elements that can be discovered on the moon, the fewer things that have to be packed onto rockets and blasted there from earth, the more the cost goes down.

So what does this mean in the future? It means that in an instant, the pathway to manned exploration of space has become markedly clearer... maybe sooner than we think.