Can Antarctica serve as a model for international cooperation on the moon?

[Admin]

Multiple nations are targeting the moon as an off-Earth destination for long-term human presence. What can they learn from the international research endeavors underway in Antarctica?

Can Antarctica serve as a model for international cooperation on the moon? : Read more

 

[Unclear Engineer]

The big difference between Antarctica and the Moon is that there will probably be some use of resources on the Moon, especially water ice if it can be found and extracted. So, if water ice is a rare, locally concentrated resource on the Moon, I expect there will be competition to control the deposits that are feasible to extract. That will probably be true if it is only used for local life support. It might get really nasty if it turns out to be useful for manufacturing rocket propellants for deeper space exploration. And, if the Moon ever gets used to build spacecraft, then locations with proximity to the necessary resources (metals, in particular, as well as water) might result in some real conflicts.

In comparison, there are no resources in Antarctica that are being extracted for local uses. Water might be considered a "local resource" there, but it certainly is not rare, there.

 

[Atlan0001]

Life in Antarctica hasn't taken off in nova, hasn't expanded and never will, thank you the inevitable invincible philosophy, ideology, culture, and physics, of a stone-like Utopian totalitarianism in the unity of treaty states. In the case of Antarctica, maybe not such a bad deal.

Earth-Life in the Space Frontier hasn't taken off in nova, hasn't expanded and never will, thank you the inevitable invincible philosophy, ideology, culture, and physics, of a stone-like Utopian totalitarianism in the unity of treaty states. In the case of the outer-space universe, the road to civilization's, probably mankind's, possibly life's, extinction on Earth.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I'll disagree with Atlan0001's pronouncements.

Life has not taken off in Antarctica because the environment there has not been conducive to human habitation. Similarly, Greenland did not develop into a self-sustaining colony of substantial duration because of the environment there. Both European and "Native American" groups had access to Greenland, so it is not a matter of bureaucracy that Greenland did not become an established community of any consequential duration.

There are similar issues with the environments on the Moon, Mars, and even on space stations orbiting Earth and other solar system bodies. The environmental conditions are not what humans would seek to live in for purposes of raising a family and creating a social community in a place not controlled by other humans they disagree with. The drivers for occupation of such inhospitable places are different: scientific, resource mining, military advantage - all driven by societies located elsewhere, which will provide essential support to humans they station in those inhospitable places.

I do not see a future where some family on Earth says "Let's pack-up and go to Mars, the land of opportunity, where we can enjoy freedom and prosperity." At least, not before the environment here on Earth has become so hellish that there would probably no longer be any opportunity to get to Mars.

 

[Atlan0001]

I'll disagree with Atlan0001's pronouncements.

Life has not taken off in Antarctica because the environment there has not been conducive to human habitation. Similarly, Greenland did not develop into a self-sustaining colony of substantial duration because of the environment there. Both European and "Native American" groups had access to Greenland, so it is not a matter of bureaucracy that Greenland did not become an established community of any consequential duration.

There are similar issues with the environments on the Moon, Mars, and even on space stations orbiting Earth and other solar system bodies. The environmental conditions are not what humans would seek to live in for purposes of raising a family and creating a social community in a place not controlled by other humans they disagree with. The drivers for occupation of such inhospitable places are different: scientific, resource mining, military advantage - all driven by societies located elsewhere, which will provide essential support to humans they station in those inhospitable places.

I do not see a future where some family on Earth says "Let's pack-up and go to Mars, the land of opportunity, where we can enjoy freedom and prosperity." At least, not before the environment here on Earth has become so hellish that there would probably no longer be any opportunity to get to Mars.

Unclear Engineer, not to put you down because there are just far too many like you in the world, but I understand only too well that you haven't read enough general and more specific histories, enough stories of peoples and personal stories deeply enough, to understand the physics, the needs and wants, of individuals and families and community groups displaced out on a alien, raw, harsh and forbidding new frontier. The only difference being they had the environment pre-ordered . . . whereas we have energy and energies in technology, AI, robotics, and other structural and infrastructural revolutionary evolved plant and insectoid-like (Space Age capable including protective) exoskeletal tools, complexities and reaches they did not have. We have the "due time" energy and need, the needs, wants, organs and the limbs to begin birthing out to the universe outside the nest . . . else energy to destroy the nest and the life within. The nature of "grow or die!"

We, life from Earth, will be the spacefaring and living cellular life contained within a new level and order of evolving cellular structures and infrastructure of space-based Space Age life.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Atlan0001, I am not accepting your readings of history as superior to mine, nor your understanding of the physics and engineering involved in living off-Earth. You have your opinion, and are welcome to it. But your denigration of others who do not agree with you is not appropriate.

I have to wonder about your own contributions to achieving the future you say that others are preventing us from having. Do you just complain that we have not achieved what you think we should have achieved, or have you actively worked to make it happen, other than making posts on the Internet?

 

[Atlan0001]

Atlan0001, I am not accepting your readings of history as superior to mine, nor your understanding of the physics and engineering involved in living off-Earth. You have your opinion, and are welcome to it. But your denigration of others who do not agree with you is not appropriate.

I have to wonder about your own contributions to achieving the future you say that others are preventing us from having. Do you just complain that we have not achieved what you think we should have achieved, or have you actively worked to make it happen, other than making posts on the Internet?

At age 76 actively contribute how? other than contributing what money I can to the cause of opening space? I had two good careers on the edge, and in some aspects of them upon occasion even closer, to space operations.

What you call my denigration of you was a denigration of your knowledge of history that you do not accept as being greater than yours. I've been at it as an enjoyed study for more than 70 of my 76, nearing 77 years, probably longer than you've been alive! The possible potential physics, and the difference between past and future conquest of frontiers, just as long!

From what you often express I have to wonder about your own realizations and knowledge of the future, knowing from what you express you know so little of the past, a future that YOU say that others, like me, know nothing of so preventing mankind from having. So I do wonder, very much so, here, now ("out loud," so to speak)! From a perspective of open system, I challenge the very narrow-closed system view of space frontier, us in it, and attacks on opening the system wide open. I'm a tested "intuitive visual mathematician" which means nothing so much more nor less than I'm a good logician proven in my two careers and career fields. Combined with my lifelong reading, study, knowledge and sense of history, I can easily project, analyze and deduct, future trends from the flows. As the saying goes, those who don't really know history, who choose to be blind to its repetitions in large, are doomed to repeat it, apocalyptically. If I can do my own little piece, as small as it will and must be, for my children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren I have, to fight that, I will!

 

[Unclear Engineer]

The only thing that tells me is that your assumption about my age is incorrect.

I am not going to get into credential comparison with you, because anybody can falsely claim anything on the Internet. I am just saying that your constant assertions that humans will move into space like we moved over the hospitable lands of the Earth are not being backed-up with anything other than your personal statements that you know more about history than the rest of us, so we should take your word for it. I am simply not convinced that you know anything more than I know, and suspect you actually know far less. Your posts would be more impressive if they contained some data and logic to support them. Tell me something relevant that I don't already know, or show me some logic that I have not previously considered, and you will start to make an impression on the way I view things.

Unless you start doing that, I am not going to waste effort trying to have a logical discussion with you. However, I may again post disagreement with your assertions when I think they are incorrect - but I will explain why I think they are incorrect when I do so. I expect that others reading such posts will find mine more convincing. I do not care whether you are convinced.

 

[Atlan0001]

Since I have far more confirming, allying and paralleling sources quoted and pointed to in my threads and posts than you do, you have a big problem with your spiel attempting to get personal. A very big problem. And you are the one who made it personal after I went after what you said as not being right, not even being wrong -- as the saying goes, just....

Enough said. I'm done with it.