A moon colony may be a reality sooner than we think

The author is Wilbur Ross, current secretary of commerce, and it feels like he was compelled to write this piece after this interaction:<p>&gt;I can still remember when President John F. Kennedy declared that America would put a man on the moon and when Neil Armstrong took that first step on the lunar landscape. Glued to televisions, Americans were filled with excitement and national pride during the Apollo missions.<p>&gt; Last month I felt that same passion as I visited the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs with Vice President Mike Pence. “As we push human exploration deeper into space, we will unleash the boundless potential of America’s pioneering commercial space companies,” the vice president told the crowd.<p>It sounds like the space industry is growing and that&#x27;s a good thing for space technology. As much as we laud American accomplishes in space exploration, it can be argued that the only investor and customer was the US, and the short term value extracted out of space was negligible.<p>Today, there&#x27;s much more market opportunities in space than previously. 15000 satellites by 2024 is an explosive growth of 20x in 5 years. Tickets selling for low orbit tourism - that didn&#x27;t exist in the past. Asteroid mining - that still seems like a pipe dream, but I&#x27;m no expert, it may be more plausible than I realize.<p>Regardless, it&#x27;s a huge indicator of a healthier space industry if a substantial part of the investment into space is coming from private companies (SpaceX notably) rather than government grants.

&gt; Competition is already fierce, with Russia and China challenging the United States for leadership<p>That&#x27;s incorrect. Russia hardly ever pushes new things in space lately. China has carefully launched several manned flights, and works hard in government space; but no commercial revolution in space of SpaceX scale anywhere on the horizon, for good reasons.<p>The biggest opponent of USA in space today is USA itself.

Move along, nothing to see here.<p>It is quite stunning how lightweight and meaningless this editorial is. The only real question is why NYT printed it. There is undoubtedly a reason somewhere in the bowels of the newsroom, but it is certainly not a reason to read it, much less to post a link to it.

The space race to put a man on Mars is no longer international. It&#x27;s completely domestic, between NASA and SpaceX. NASA&#x27;s SLS (Space Launch System) versus SpaceX&#x27;s BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) is an interesting comparison to examine. Both look promising despite the numerous possible setbacks. Looking forward to upcoming information regarding the manned launches to Mars.

Much more info is available elsewhere. It seems like this is the <i>&#x27;deregulate X&#x27; for all X</i> formula applied to commercial space flight.<p>I&#x27;m not for or against regulations; I think that you can only have a reasonable about particular regulations, and then the analysis is more complex than &#x27;for or against&#x27; (tighten this, loosen that, fund this, accelerate this other thing, etc.). It would be great to hear an analysis of the costs and benefits of the specific changes; I&#x27;m afraid the only voices are on one side; this change as announced is all about one group&#x27;s interests, big business; how will it affect others - public interest, taxpayers, science, military, small business, NASA research, astronauts, the use of space in other countries and among partners, etc.?<p>Here&#x27;s some much better info than the parent link, though still basically only a detailed rehash of the announcement with no other points of view or analysis:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.space.com&#x2F;40692-president-trump-private-spaceflight-policy-directive.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.space.com&#x2F;40692-president-trump-private-spacefli...</a><p>A lot of background from a few days ago, also all one-dimensional unfortunately:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.complianceweek.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;news-article&#x2F;spaceregulations-jpm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.complianceweek.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;news-article&#x2F;spaceregula...</a><p>And a timely money quote:<p><i>&quot;Right now, we don&#x27;t let self driving cars go everywhere although we do allow it in a lot of places,&quot; Ketcham said. &quot;Eventually, that technology will mature (to a point) that no one will notice. And the same is true in space flight.&quot;</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;amp.usatoday.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;640565002" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;amp.usatoday.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;640565002</a>

Lots of people on HN keep up with the space industry and news. Is there any coverage of this story elsewhere?<p>I&#x27;d really like to see the other side(s) of this story. I don&#x27;t trust op-eds at all, especially by politicians, especially by this U.S. administration, especially in regard to it helping its supporters (big business).<p>EDIT: And trying to hook people with moon colonies is transparent.<p>EDIT: added first paragraph, to get to the point promptly, and edited the second.

So the government created a organization to help with commercialization of space, I don&#x27;t see how this will help because launch costs are still high and they still have to go through the FAA to launch. Yes launch prices will come down but it&#x27;s still it&#x27;s still probably 10-20 years before costs are low enough to reach anything the size of the ISS is even feasible for anything other than governments.

An underwater colony is far cheaper and more feasible than a moon colony. When people talk about exploring outer space, they should think about exploring the continental shelf and building colonies there rather than building colonies on another planet.

Pondering over the uses of such an endeavor.<p>- Tourism - Minerals - Building a space observatory - Launchpad for further manned planetary missions.<p>I did read somewhere that, just as easy it is to get off the moons surface, it&#x27;s equally or more difficult to get onto it.

I just appreciate that SPACE is a recursive acronym.

The Mars Colony that people have assured me will be in operation within the next 50 years, is still 150 years away <i>at least</i>.