![]() ![]() What advantage does the Moon have with respect to Mars ![]() 20-30% lower launch price while helpful - is not be-or-not-to-be for any attempts of flying beyond LEO. Making rockets reusable only brings a premise of lowering price, and even that isn't anywhere near of what was expected 5 years ago. It won't happen as long as the rockets are disposableįalse. In fact the first Moon Villlage workshop was about creating outpost orbiting the moon instead of a lunar base). (And in fact for many applications small space station on the orbit of the moon combined with telerobotics would be a much better solution than actually landing humans on a surface. Moon Village would exist even if no human would step on the surface of the moon. One thing worth noting that the article got wrong: Moon Village is not a concept to build a large base on a surface of the moon, it's a concept of creating scientific and commercial environment on and around the moon. Hopefully, though, the ESA can start devising systems for a lunar colony and get some funding put that way - as I don't think NASA or any other American competitor has really looked much into what infrastructure is needed, outside of ULA's Cislunar-1000 proposal, which only delves into fuel depots on the Moon. Going even further, Blue Origin is likely to have New Glenn reusable rocket being flown when Ariane VI comes online - which looks to be a solidly viable rocket to go to the moon, especially with its LH2/LOX 3rd stage. I can't see the ECA's 10,500kg payload to GTO being remotely close to a viable cost-per-kilo solution to get people and payload to Mars. Ideally, Ariane's next-gen re-usable Methlox engine can allow them to take a huge leap forward on cost to deliver payload to TLI, and the more-important quantifiable leap in payload-to-orbit. Given Arianespace's requests from ESA and others for subsidies, and what the ESA spends a year, it will be a gargantuan task. They are going to need to take some major steps in reducing cost-to-launch before that becomes viable. ![]()
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