moon landing?

Hard to imagine it's been almost 50 years since man has walked on the moon.

I still have the copy of the New York Times I bought for a dime when I was 7 years old...
 
I would like to see men on the moon again, regardless of their country

Yeah, with the advances in techology we've made in the last 50 years, it would be quite an amazing thing to see.

Several years ago, I read an article which said that the Apple iPhone 6S had more computing power than every computer used to put man on the moon in 1969.

And they give it to us!
 
Yeah, with the advances in techology we've made in the last 50 years, it would be quite an amazing thing to see.

Several years ago, I read an article which said that the Apple iPhone 6S had more computing power than every computer used to put man on the moon in 1969.

And they give it to us!

That is true, but only because 1969 was the cusp of the start of CPU chips.
Before that is was individual transistors, tubes, or relays.
After that they just sprayed on layers and used a photographic process to fix the semiconductor gates they wanted.
 
Israel and UAE hope to go there in 3 years time.

Space exploration is one thing but technology today can give us answer and never leave the ground. We can't live anywhere else. Why bother.
Spend the money at home.
 
Not necessarily.
Its not clear we got much out of going to the Moon, and technology is causing a burn out on earth.
Using up too much fossil fuel, too much pollution, too many people, etc.
We likely will need all the resources we can.
There may be a possibility that we will find a source for much needed pollution free energy on the moon.

 
There may be a possibility that we will find a source for much needed pollution free energy on the moon.


Helium is not an energy source.
The moon is dead, and is not likely to have any source of energy except for the same fissile radioactive elements we decided to stop using on Earth.
 
Helium is not an energy source.
The moon is dead, and is not likely to have any source of energy except for the same fissile radioactive elements we decided to stop using on Earth.
Maybe you can think of a way.
 
Helium is not an energy source.
The moon is dead, and is not likely to have any source of energy except for the same fissile radioactive elements we decided to stop using on Earth.
I’m talking about Helium-3.


Helium-3 Power Generation
Helium-3 (He3) is gas that has the potential to be used as a fuel in future nuclear fusion power plants. There is very little helium-3 available on the Earth. However, there are thought to be significant supplies on the Moon. Several governments have subsequently signalled their intention to go to the Moon to mine helium-3 as a fuel supply. Such plans may come to fruition within the next two to three decades and trigger a new Space Race.

In addition to the information below, you can also find out more about this topic in my Mining the Moon video or in my BBC interview here. There is also a good article by Fabrizio Bozzato in this June 2014 article for The Diplomat, which in turn is based on his extensive and excellent paper here. There is also a very good recent article here.

You may also want to checkout my broader page on resources from space.

Helium-3 and Nuclear Fusion​

To provide a little background -- and without getting deeply into the science -- all nuclear power plants use a nuclear reaction to produce heat. This is used to turn water into steam that then drives a turbine to produce electricity. Current nuclear power plants have nuclear fission reactors in which uranium nuclei are split part. This releases energy, but also radioactivity and spent nuclear fuel that is reprocessed into uranium, plutonium and radioactive waste which has to be safety stored, effectively indefinitely. An overview of this nuclear fuel cycle can be found here.

For over 40 years scientists have been working to create nuclear power from nuclear fusion rather than nuclear fission. In current nuclear fusion reactors, the hydrogen isotopes tritium and deuterium are used as the fuel, with atomic energy released when their nuclei fuse to create helium and a neutron. Nuclear fusion effectively makes use of the same energy source that fuels the Sun and other stars, and does not produce the radioactivity and nuclear waste that is the by-product of current nuclear fission power generation. However, the so-termed "fast" neutrons released by nuclear fusion reactors fuelled by tritium and deuterium lead to significant energy loss and are extremely difficult to contain. One potential solution may be to use helium-3 and deuterium as the fuels in "aneutronic" (power without neutrons) fusion reactors. The involved nuclear reaction here when helium-3 and deuterium fuse creates normal helium and a proton, which wastes less energy and is easier to contain. Nuclear fusion reactors using helium-3 could therefore provide a highly efficient form of nuclear power with virtually no waste and no radiation. A short wall chart explaining this in more detail can be found here. The aforementioned fission and fusion nuclear reactions are also illustrated in animations in my Mining the Moon video.
 
Not necessarily.
Its not clear we got much out of going to the Moon, and technology is causing a burn out on earth.
Using up too much fossil fuel, too much pollution, too many people, etc.
We likely will need all the resources we can.
Off earth is where we have to be if we're gonna survive. The moon is a stepping stone, a jumping off point. We should have been developing a moon base in the 1960s. Instead the Chinese are doing it.
 

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