Quote from: Luis_Gray on August 06, 2018, 07:45:29 PM

Quote from: Spendulus on August 05, 2018, 06:13:03 PM

I'm okay with that wording. By the way, this has been gone through pretty exhaustively with respect to He3 on the surface of the Moon. There, it's well known that it's worth shipping it back to Earth. It's a fusion fuel which pretty much does not exist here. And because the Moon has no atmosphere and a low gravity, means of practical return-tank-to-earth exist.

Because of the heat/cold cycles of Lunar day, and the complete vacuum, there may well come to be various scientific experiments on the Moon for which it is desirable to return samples to earth.

There could also be scientific experiments on Mars for which sample return to Earth was plausible. Not that it would be economically efficient, just that some guys here wanted those samples at any cost.

But in terms of traditional materials production, metals, plastics, for example, there is nothing so rare or valuable that it could be returned to Earth for profit. I can envision some electronics being left out in the open on Mars, and then a solar storm occurring, and it being desirable to return the circuitry to Earth for detailed examination (learn how to make it better, right?)

This all sounds pretty fascinating. I had never heard about He3 specifically. Am I wrong in assuming that it should be much easier to travel to an land on the moon than on Mars? I think it's fine that some people dream of going to Mars, but wouldn't it be a good idea to trying landing on the moon again first. It seems ridiculous that people are actively working on visiting another planet, when we haven't even been able to visit the moon more than once.

Do we actually have a complete picture of all the resources available on Mars? It seems like there is often talk of them possible discovering water there. This leads me to believe that there very well may be resources there that we don't know about yet. Maybe it could becomes more plausible, when we have more info about what's up there.

The moon has some very interesting aspects but it is depleted in certain key elements of the periodic table such as H, C, N. That being the case means the Moon cannot support life by itself, and also means many things cannot be natively manufactured there. (plastics, carbon steel, ...)

Mars does have a full set of elements. It is farther away, but the rocket energy required for Mars is a bit less than the Moon.