[bugsy]

I like these parts:

"There are no known technical barriers to the establishment of a manned installation on the moon."

"There is a requirement for a manned military outpost on the moon. The lunar outpost is required to develop and protect potential United States interests on the moon; to develop techniques in moon-based surveillance of the earth and space, in communications relay, and in operations on the surface of the moon; to serve as a base for exploration of the moon, for further exploration into space and for military operations on the moon if required"

[sorbus]

The first is technically true, though. There is very little new technology which would have to be developed to establish an outpost on the moon, it would just be ridiculously expensive to ship everything up there.

[bugsy]

In 1959 I am not sure it was really true that there were no known technical barriers. I appreciate though the optimism of von Braun (whose report this essentially was) that there were no such barriers. In 1959 they still had a number of things to do just to get to the moon, and 52 years later we still have not established a base there.

[philwelch]

Today, and potentially then as well, there is virtually no strategic value to the moon whatsoever. Surveillance of earth and space and communications can both be done more cost-effectively by satellites, exploring further into space is not especially easier with the help of a moon base since the moon is still well enough within Earth's gravity well not to make for a useful waypoint to outlying destinations, and the other justifications are completely question-begging.

[wladimir]

IMO we should really be building a Lunar outpost, not because it has strategic value at this moment, but because it will have that in the future. When travel to the rest of the solar system will be more commonplace, having an outpost on the moon is of really large strategic importance.

I wish humanity could still do big, ambitious projects like that.

[philwelch]

Is that really true, though? According to this diagram, the moon seems pretty out of the way if you just want to go between Earth and, for instance, Mars. You get a lot of wasted delta-v due to the moon producing its own gravity well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deltavs.svg

[wladimir]

Interesting figure!

The low gravity is a big advantage though. It is very easy to get things into space from the moon.

So if you can construct things on the moon, you have an advantage in space. It also makes it easy to hurl things into space for more destructive reasons.

[khafra]

I'm pretty sure there are technical barriers to constructing an ore-mining-to-finished-product spaceship factory on the moon.

[wladimir]

Sure, many. It's a huge challenge. Not impossible. If we'd set it as goal, we could develop the technology and science as we go. I'm sure humanity is inventive enough. I mean, we did go to the moon with 60's technology...

But even thinking ahead more than 2 years seems impossible these days, everything is focused on the now and short-term profit. Anyway, rant over, it's nice to think big instead of small once in a while :)

[Smithi]

Eml2 would be a good place for rendezvous between earth reentry craft and interplanetary spacecraft. It's a low deltaV target from both earth surface and interplanetary trajectories, and using it would get us away from an architecture that can handle at most a 4 person mission profile.