I was responding to the colonization idea, you might be able to convince me that mining fuel on the moon would be beneficial for large scale deep space missions, except we are not there yet. First we would need to make a spacecraft that can be refueled on the fly without needing massive work on them. I read somewhere that with all the inspection and maintenance required spaceX's reusable boosters cost as much as their throw away predecessors / launch.
Who you think is going to operate the machinery to do this? Robots? Someone has to live there to make all this happen. Using the Moon as a base close to Earth to reach other planets or celestial objects will be far cheaper than just launching from Earth every time.
There should be enough resources ON the moon that it wouldn't need to be resupplied as often as the ISS.
Most of that is because of Earths atmosphere. It puts a lot of stress on things that move at super sonic speeds through our atmosphere. Once you're in space, there is no wind resistance. A rocket/spaceship that travels from the Moon to other places in the solar system wouldn't be the type of space craft that flies down to Earth.
You just said it yourself. Flying from Earth to even LEO costs a LOT of money and resources to get there. Going from the Moon to say Mars wouldn't need nearly as much fuel despite it being a LOT further away. No resistance in space, object in motion remains in motion, so once the craft gets up to speed it'll nearly coast at that speed until it reaches it's destination.
But you don't need a reactor on the moon for a space station. Even though so far space stations were more like gimmicks with no real use, I think making a permanent larger scale space station is a better idea than putting anything on the moon in the near future.
Resupplying a permanent presence on the moon would be a logistics nightmare. Last I checked even accessing the ISS was a big problem, and mostly facilitated through Russia. Not ideal to say the least.
How do you think it's going to get electricity? The Space Station flies around Earth like 16 times in 24 hours. So using batteries for the short time it's behind Earth from the Sun isn't that difficult. The Moon orbits on its axis about once every ~27 days. You think it'll be easier to have enough batteries for no sunlight for ~27 days? Having Nuclear power that provides continuous energy is required.
As I said above. The objective of colonizing ANY celestial object is to make it so it doesn't rely on resupply missions for the basic necessities such as food and water. Water is on the moon. How much water can't really be determined until we go there and dig below the surface. Since most of the water is located in the shadows of the craters in small quantities. It seems reasonable to think water has seeped below the lunar surface as it has done on Earth.
Its bs. Space colonization is bs. Yes it is. Arguments of doing this or the other rd are bs. Exploration, probes, sure why not here and there. Though we made enough exploration to know, its all dead, its all very inhospitable.
I agree, a million percent a more worthwhile endeavor is colonizing the sea bed, or any dead area like a very hot desert. It's right there, the desert or the sea and its very hard to do too. Yet mention this, well, its just not practical or cost effective or some such bs, yet reactors on the moon, suuure. What a joke. Plenty of nearly impossible problems here on earth to fix, but those ain't sexy or tacky enough I guess.
If we don't, as a species, figure out how to fly out into our solar system and beyond we will ultimately die. Not only our species, but every living thing on this planet. Granted, we got ~5 billion years to figure it out.
Sure everything in our local Solar system seems to be completely unlivable in it's current state and we'll have to build ways for us to live on them. That doesn't mean that out of the ~100 billion stars in the Milkyway are all the same.
You are right, plenty of problems already on Earth, that doesn't mean everyone has to focus on those problems. Put people who are good at them on that while the others can do other stuff. It's literally how our civilization has become what it is today. Everyone does a role.