The Economist
Return to Moon Base Gingrich
DESPITE receiving a round kicking, Newt Gingrich is not giving up on his moon base. To support his cause, Mr Gingrich has invoked the two animating forces of a previous space age: John F. Kennedy's vision of sending a man to the moon and the threat of some other nation getting there first. This is standard fare in any argument in favour of human space exploration. It's also based on a flawed reading of history.
Kennedy's great moon venture was a politically motivated ploy that may have turned out differently had he lived. For a while, the strategy seemed crucial in proving the inferiority of communism. But behind the scenes the president admitted to being "not that interested in space", and by 1963 he had begun a major rethink of the programme because of its "fantastic expenditures". At the United Nations that year he asked whether America and the Soviet Union ought to be involved in such "duplications of research and construction", and proposed a joint lunar programme. After a cool reaction from the Soviets, Kennedy was assassinated a few months later and the moon race became his legacy. But it was not a lone dash that Kennedy had envisioned as much as a joint venture, and although his spirit is often invoked when new cosmic voyages are proposed, the former president had little interest in the universe outside of Earth's atmosphere.
More importantly, if a "race" back to the moon actually exists, the economic rationale for going (to claim resources) can be achieved by sending robots, or a small number of temporary visitors assisted by machines. Money can be made without creating a lunar colony, but it seems colonisation in and of itself is Mr Gingrich's goal. And that presents a problem. We already know that short periods of near-zero gravity are extremely unhealthy for adults. They suffer significant losses in bone density and muscle atrophy after only six months on the space station. How about a lifetime on the low-gravity moon? And what about the children?! The human developmental process is designed for Earth's gravity, meaning a moon pregnancy would involve serious risks. Any child that survived would be crushed by gravity if they tried to return to the Earth.
At this point one could mutter something about developments in technology that could overcome basic human biology, but even humanity's mastery of technology cannot overcome the facts. The moon is a cold, airless, lifeless lump of rock a long way away. Only a lunatic would want to raise kids there.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/02/space-exploration
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