this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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What is up with all these moon missions lately? First Russia, then India, now Japan.
It's the cool retro thing all the kids are doing these days.
The 60s are in again.
moon, so hot right now
Launches got really cheap recently.
Earth's fucked. Accelerating plans to advance technology so we can fuck up another planet.
And "we", I am mean "them". The wealthy and their servants.
Earth is not fucked, but having a proper moon base makes key technologys a necessity, like really large scale co2 scrubbers. Also, the moon is basically a new gold mine for Helium-3, which is going to be very important in the future.
Having large scale co2 scrubbers makes a huge difference on earth as well.
Helium-3 is a fuel for fusion that does have its benefits, but most scientists are focused on Deuterium-Tritium reactions. On the moon, the most concentrated regolith has only 50 parts of helium-3 per billion. That is super sparse. Like, we may as well be sifting uranium out of Earth's oceans at that point. And if we're doing giant space-based megaprojects, the gas giants probably have higher concentrations of helium-3 or we could just beam power around from giant solar panels.
This is a fair argument against Elon Musk's dream to colonize Mars - it is indeed an escapist fantasy. But with the recent and upcoming moon missions, the involved parties (government orgs!) are quite clear that they're not doing it out of a false belief that they can make a self-sustaining colony. That stuff is over a century away. Only billionaires and their simps believe it lol.
moon's not a planet
Progress doesn't start at settling on other planets. Gotta start to refine the technology ssomewhere.
pluto is a planet