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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ralts Bloodthorne" data-source="post: 493235" data-attributes="member: 6390">OK, let's look at some interesting things.  Colonizing the moon-Lunar soil IS fertile.  It requires very little to work.  It would be in abundance, since you'd have to bore out major tunnel systems to live inside.  Nuclear Fission is not the demon everyone makes it out to be (sigh, let's not debate it, my opinion is set in stone, and so is yours) and would be cheap and useful on the moon.  Half the problem with it is cooling, and that would be solved easily.  So, we land some Von Nueman drones (robots programmed to make other robots) near a metal deposit (of which, several have been mapped, a fairly large one near Mare Imbrium) to start building.  Mainly a factory.  If we don't want to go that high tech, use the Freedom Space Station as a relay point for workers.  As for the workers, many people would volunteer.  Highly capable people.  I'd volunteer, wouldn't you?  Yes, grinding, hard work, sweaty, with major chances of everything from a suit blowout, to starvation, to space induced agoraphobia.  So what?  I'd be part of history.  Now, let's look at from the tech point of view.....  Computer equipment is more than capable of handling the load.  Hell, you could take some modern servers and have them run life support.  $7200 each from Gateway.  Let's see them service call that!  Anyway:  Tubular aluminum.  Light, strong, and useful.  For additional solidity, add in lunar dust for weight and compression adjustment.  Modular building forms.  Use thick plastic sheathing on tunnel and cavern walls (shipped to the Freedom station in drums, then moved to the moon) then add a form of lunar dust drywall.  Burrow for the ice.  We're talking major crawlers to reach it.  Listen, don't be fooled:  We have the tech.  Volunteers:  not a problem.  A lot of qualified people would do it.  It's not like your flying the shuttle or making space walks.  Your living and working on the moon.  The space is vast, water is there (melted by heat and then electrically seperated into O2 for breathing and H for fuel) for the use, and mineral deposits.  The mineral deposits can be shipped back to earth via mass-driver (a long electromagnetic rail to fire the pigs of metal back to Earth)Now, that's just for the moon.  But you'll see why Mars isn't even on the agenda.  Stick with me....  Now, why not?  Why won't we go?  Power.  Plain and simple.  What country owns the resources and tech advances?  Which country gets to ship people?  What if it becomes feasable?  What if the technologically advanced countries have it easy?  Is it right that 3rd World nations don't have access to those resources?  Don't they have just as much right to space?  (Uhhh, no, not in my opinion.  If you can't get there on your own, tough)  Now, as for Mars, why?  Asteriod mining could be processed there, then shipped to the moon for it's final destination.  Mars has unknown potential, with who knows what kind of mineral riches.  It died early in it's geological stages, so know knows what minerals were not burned up by the atmosphere?  While we'll have to deal with "fines" and "dust", who knows what could be accomplished.  Put the space center on top of that big-ass mountain, and use a mag-lift to get supplies and equipment there.  We have the gear, but nobody is willing to do it, because whatever country does it, will have everyone snivelling that that country must help them.  It's BS.  It's not worth the investment to many countries.  We have the tech, but hell, everyone complains about the cost.  With the problems it would create on earth, its just not worth it.</blockquote>

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