What SCIENCE is there to be done on the surface of the moon?

[ScallopPotato]

In a lot of discussions or proposals about returning humans to the moon or building a moon base, I fail to see people talk about what exact scientific work can be done while on the surface but can't be done elsewhere. This compares to the exploration of Mars, where the scientific objectives are frequently talked about (ie following the water, climbing stratified mountains, etc). In addition, many achievements that have been done on the moon, like sample return, haven't been done on Mars yet.

IMO, the moon and mars really are apples to oranges, so it's really not much of a "proving ground" for Mars missions. I just hear that argument a lot and I don't think it really justify the costs of a moon base versus an artificial gravity station in cis-lunar space.

I would like to know what big questions about the moon demand investigating on the surface, regardless if it's manned or unmanned, and which ones require the former.

[xenomorph555]

There is still a lot of exploration to do on the moon as well as industrial things such as metals, solar and construction of larger ships in orbit with said materials (like your artgrav station however we should be honest it would to be MASSIVE to work) it is also easier to launch stuff from the moon. Also before we send men and women off on incredible journeys to new worlds we should see if we can do it on our closest neighbour. New discoveries about the moon are made every few years, there is no "all science is complete".

[mdatspace]

The "proving ground" reason for manned lunar exploration and colonization does not really hold merit. Radiation can be researched out of earths magnetosphere and Gravity can be researched in LEO. Life support can be tested in LEO.

The government is focused on mars and the political reality of today is not conducive to a moon return. Commercial companies, however, with explore the moon. Bigelow is thinking about it. If I am correct, Elon said that it could be used to test technology in an (NBC?) interview. Still, not the most cost effective proving ground.

There is still a lot of exploration to do on the moon as well as industrial things such as metals, solar and construction of larger ships in orbit with said materials (like your artgrav station however we should be honest it would to be MASSIVE to work) it is also easier to launch stuff from the moon. Also before we send men and women off on incredible journeys to new worlds we should see if we can do it on our closest neighbour. New discoveries about the moon are made every few years, there is no "all science is complete".

There is still science to be done. Edited April 13, 2014 by mdatspace

[Moar Boosters]

The main thing would be geological survey work.

At some point we may very well need to mine the moon for rare earth minerals. You don't build an oil rig until you know where to drill. First you do extensive surveying to figure out where the best deposits are, and some sort of base with long-range rovers would be well suited to this task.

Mining and extraction techniques may well be critical to a Mars mission, so it'd be better to practice them on the Moon where the lives of your astronauts don't depend on it.

[deadshot462]

Base construction, rocket building, fuel processing. Learning how to use the local resources would be a big step. That kind of manufacturing could be used on Mars.

[Scotius]

Apollo missions did not survey that much of the Moon. It's like you landed in the middle of Texas, England and Sahara, walked around for couple of hours, and then claimed you've surveyed all of the Earth.

[vger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3

[nhnifong]

I think we should run experiments that attempt to grow plants on the moon under pressurized domes with water brought from earth.

[78stonewobble]

I was rewatching that documentary the NASA missions yesterday and watching some of scott manly's (spelling?) videos after playing doing some 3 different mun landings in kerbal spaceprogram. Got me thinking exactly about this... Should we go back to the moon...

I actually think the answer is yes... Not with 10 (?) or so originally planned apollo lunar landings, but fewer and somewhat more long stays at interesting places.

I imagined 2-3 landings with week to months long stays. Meaning we are able to resupply the landings from earth, if necessary.

The hardware we put down on the moon, should be made in such a way that it guarantees a relatively long lifetime, in the case we find it necessary to go back. They can be used as those polar, antarctic shelters the first explorers built, that the next expedition used.

The point of these landings would be moon research at those interesting places, gather experience with establishing bases on the surface of another stellar body that is not zero G, gather experience with in-situ ressource utilisation, space food farming and whatever we can think of, that we need experience with.

Experience that will be needed should we ever wish to establish permanent presense on the moon or go to mars.

A sort of gemini precursor of a mars programme, but this time designed in a way that we can, potentially get use of the hardware used in years to come.

Personally though, I find the asteroid capture thing equally interesting and it should be done too, to the point of maybe cutting some lunar expeditions, but I think atleast one will still be needed. Which could then have additional crews staying for longer.

EDIT and PS:

Yes... I know that the moon and mars are quite different, but the fact of the matter is that we have zero practical experience in constructing a surface base, protect it against cosmic radiation, grow enough food on the surface or make ressources available from the processing of local materials.

I think the basic principles of this should be explored before we launch people on multi year missions to mars, where it's insanely expensive to emergency resupply, if it is at all.

Edited April 13, 2014 by 78stonewobble

[Othuyeg]

I believe the moon could be used as a place to build larger telescopes and deep space surveillance equipment. No atmosphere, easy construction due to low gravity and plenty of cheap real estate. (Builders might have a bit of a long commute.)

[xenomorph555]

It would be better to practise living on other worlds on the moon, if something goes wrong they are not too far away unlike mars.

[Nao]

I share the OP's concern, and right now i see no economical point in returning to the moon.

It's atmosphereless, so it can't really be used as test ground for mars mission since there is a lot of different engineering challenges on Mars that just don't occur on the Moon and vice versa.

Testing growing plants and other low gravity stuff could be tested with centrifuges in low earth orbit.

Also the cost is an issue, gathering experience is good, but at some point, it is just cheaper to do the homework well enough to be sure it works in the filed at first try. (For example the B2 bomber program, the plane was so expensive that it had no prototypes, or "test" aircrafts, the first one off the assembly line went right into service).

The telescopes/deeps space surveillance is an interesting point, as it could shield the sensitive equipment from noisy earth. And there are a bunch of smaller research projects that could be performed at the Moon bases, but the problem is that these project's couldn't self sustain Moon base economically.

As for mining, most of the stuff can be mined from asteroids at a cheaper cost, since not only we have more experience with space constructions but it is just plainly closer and more accessible.

So maybe the first big thing that will kickstart Moon Bases will be be... tourism! (or Helium3 if we suddenly start needing it in large quantities)

[78stonewobble]

The B2 also had quite a few problems in the beginning of it's service, if I remember correctly.

[WindShieIds]

Blow a soap bubble on the moon, see what happens.

[Nibb31]

Asking if there is science left to be done on the Moon is like asking if there is science left to be done in the ocean or in the South Pole, yet McMurdo has been operating for decades and we are still building oceanographic survey ships.

There is a lot of science that needs to be done before we can go to Mars. A lot of the tech for going to Mars is at TRL 3 or 4 at best. It needs to be at 8 or 9 for humans to rely on it for multi-year missions to other planets.

For example, we don't know anything about long duration survival on the surface of another planet, construction techniques, radiation mitigation, dust mitigation, closed loop life support, partial gravity, ISRU, and so on.

Apollo could never have worked without Gemini, and a mission to Mars is really too big of a leap with current technology.

We could test some of these techniques in a BEO station, but building a second ISS at EML-1 with a large-centrifuge and greenhouses id going to cost more than building it on the Moon with ISRU techniques that we are going to have to learn anyway.

[Nao]

The B2 also had quite a few problems in the beginning of it's service, if I remember correctly.

Haha true that. But the first built fuselage was designed with confidence that there won't be any big problems that would need some major redesign, and will be used by the military after solving problems with subsystems. And (to my knowleage) it was a first time to build completely new type of craft without prototyping it's design. (As a engineer i find it extraordinary)

Right now we have even better abilities to simulate and predict how the given design will work, (we got better programs, more computing power, deeper understanding of physics and generally more experience with modern prediction/simulation techniques than the guys creating the B2) So i'm hopeful it's possible that for mars mission we are just above the cost threshold for simulation (or approximation from limited tests) to be cheaper than full filed testing (like making a moon base to see if astronauts can build/live on other planets).

Edited April 13, 2014 by Nao

[Skyler4856]

We still know very little about the dynamics of natural moon development, and the interiors of said bodies.

[KASASpace]

Much of Luna, like the Oceans of Earth, have not been explored.

So, who knows, maybe a new organic compound could be discovered (Organic compounds have been discovered on comets/asteroids).

Or anything.

Heck, there are possibly MILLIONS of species on Earth ALONE that we haven't discovered.

Did you know, an entire patch of forest wasn't discovered till recently (early 2000s, even though satellites get "complete" coverage).

I say we go to get experience with long-term stays on the surfaces of other bodies (like Mars).

But, before we go on a full on expedition to Luna, we should at least do some more exploring here, even for a little bit of time.

[TerLoki]

Pretty sure the Apollo guys forgot to bring mystery goo along, we should get on that.

[vger]

Pretty sure the Apollo guys forgot to bring mystery goo along, we should get on that.

And Aperture Science is waiting for a shipment of white goo.

[ScallopPotato]

I don't want to be rude to anyone, but my question hasn't been convincingly answered. Let's say I'm congress, you're NASA, and I'm reviewing your budget to reduce costs/risks. I need to know WHY we have to go to the moon to do XYZ stuff.

Others have pointed out that things like long duration stays, radiation exposure testing, or artificial gravity environments can be done in LEO or EML2.

Mars society explain the apples to oranges-ness between the Moon and Mars.

A: While valuable in its own right, human Lunar exploration will teach us very little about how to survive on Mars. The two are drastically different environments:

The Moon has no atmosphere, which means that testing methods of generating rocket fuel from the atmosphere cannot be tested at all.

Temperatures on the two bodies are wildly different: Mars ranges from roughly -90C (-130F) to +10C (50F), while the Moon, during its 672-hour day, averages +100C (212F).

Mars has a 24.65-hour day, very similar to Earth; the Moon has a 672-hour day.

Water exists in abundance on Mars -- as ice seen at the poles by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and frozen into the Martian soil. While water may exist on the Moon, it is nowhere near as available there, and would require considerably more effort to obtain.

Mars' gravity is roughly 1/3 of Earth's; the Moon's is roughly 1/6 of Earth's.

Indeed, comparing the two environments, it might actually be said that we need to go to Mars to prepare for the considerably more harsh environment of the Moon!

It is useful to practice for Mars before we go, but this can be done in the Arctic at 1/1000th the cost of a Lunar training facility.

A polar moon base could be a good place to practice for missions to icy vacuum bodies like Ceres and Callisto, but that probably would happen AFTER a manned mars mission. I'm thinking of the 2040s/2050s or so.

A lot of people mention Helium-3, but I've become a bit skeptical of it recently. For one, it's a 2nd generation fusion fuel, and we haven't even achieved 1st generation fusion with d-t. Also, while Helium-3 is apparently less rare on the moon, it's still mixed with all the other rocks. So it'd require plenty of extraction and refining of rocks. And that means bringing heavy equipment and a power supply. At some point, it could be profitable do these things, but I don't see that happening until the 2nd half of the 21st century.

It is very true that there's lots of survey work needing to be done, but how much of that requires a surface visit versus remote sensing in orbit? What sort of geologic field work has to be done in the 2020s/2030s?

My favorite reason to return to the moon is to study apparent subsurface water and sinkholes and private lunar tourism. I'm thinking of a circumlunar race broadcasted to people around the world.

One thing to consider is that the pressing scientific questions may be tackled by developing space agencies that want to land robots on the moon to demonstrate their spaceflight capabilities.

[vger]

While it might be possible to remote-drill on the moon, if we ever want to go deeper, I can't see depending on a robot to handle the task on its own.

And I'm very curious about the presence of water. If we were going to send just one more manned mission, I'd want it to be a polar landing.

[Idobox]

Helium-3 is worthless as a fusion fuel: it's rare, difficult to mine, difficult to fuse and there are side reactions that produce neutrons.

The Moon is essentiqlly a chunck of primordial Earth with a lot of asteroid impacts. It's a very nice place to study early Earth, the composition of asteroids, and how the solar system evolved (number and composition of asteroids vs time).

It is also a great place to put a radiotelescope, since it has no atmosphere and shields us from Earth noise.

And I imagine you could build interresting particle detectors up there, since you're out of the Earth magnetosphere, but still have a bunch of material (like ice) lying around that might be used in the detector

[Sillychris]

The moon is a gold mine for high energy particle physics. Cosmic rays have been known to get as high as 10^20 eV which is 20-40 million times more powerful than the LHC. We can't observe them directly on Earth, but we do have many arrays set up to measure the shower of secondary particles. Still, it would be nice to get some more direct measurements.

Anyway, landing a detector array on the moon will likely spring particle physics ahead faster than anything we currently have.

Also, it's cheaper than building the LHC.

[cantab]

In terms of studying the Moon itself, loads. However, that can be done fairly well by unmanned landers and rovers, especially as a lunar rover can be driven in near real-time and so travel much faster than one on Mars or Venus, though it may still be slower than a manned rover. Compare Apollo 17's moon buggy, the unmanned Lunokhod 2, and the Opportunity rover: They all drove about the same distance, but took 4 1/2 hours, 5 months, and 10 years to do it respectively.

In terms of science to do from the Moon, again plenty. However a practical approach again might be to design the experiments to be autonomous, while having the possibility of manned servicing missions if needed. This worked very well for Hubble, though it is much easier to get to being in LEO.

In terms of science to do on people, I think the big one is understanding how the human body handles reduced gravity. We know a good amount about zero-g, and of course loads about 1-g, but nothing of what lies between.

Considering the comparison between the Moon and Mars, I think it's fair to say that if humans can survive, stay healthy, get water, and so on on the Moon, we can almost certainly do it on Mars. Meanwhile the Moon offers the advantage of being closer to get to, and possible to get back from in a hurry if needed.