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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 6233503" data-attributes="member: 3649">It gives you a pre-made jump-start for a human moon base, since the tube will usually have a pretty good covering of lunar rock and dust to serve as insulation and a significant radiation barrier. We'll always bemoan that we don't have a human moon base up there, when we should have had it decades ago. Mars is good, but it's months away at best. And I believe that any significant exploitation or colonization of Mars will not happen without a manned lunar presence. We need a shipyard and a fuel refinery on the Moon instead of boosting all this crap up out of the atmosphere. Barring the miraculous invention of a large-scale runway-to-high orbit-to runway cargo carrier, ultimately we will need a base on Luna and a significant orbital presence. The other significance to this is that China is going up there with one of it's major goals being exploitation, mapping out possible good mining spots, doing the on-site analysis to determine where stuff might be, etc, as a prelude to building a human moon base. Again, something we should have been doing for years and years. Also: If we want to get paranoid about things, there's this: the power that can take and hold Orbital rules this planet. No planet-based defense can adequately defend against someone who decides to throw rocks.</blockquote>