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Comment by superkuh

It's a shame that the lunar gateway is useless and itself a jobs program like SLS. Since NASA decided not to fund the version of the asteroid retrieval mission (ARM) that included de-spin there are no near earth asteroids that can be brought back to the proposed space station. All it can do is uselessly orbit the Moon, getting full cosmic radiation dose instead of less than half in Earth orbit in the magnetosphere.

In terms of resources the moon itself only has water. But it's down in a difficult to access gravity well. There's no nitrogen. Far, far, better would be fully funding ARM and starting to despin and drag asteroids to the lunar gateway for study, resources, and eventually living space in space protected from radiation and, if you build sub-surface tracks, enough acceleration to live normally.

parent superkuh 5 years ago

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