50
Japan launches moon lander and X-ray observatory
(spacenews.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
50 points (100.0% liked)
Space
7286 readers
50 users here now
News and findings about our cosmos.
Subcommunity of Science
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I'm pretty sure this has something to do with using the Moon as a jumping-off point to the rest of the solar system. Assuming we can get a functioning colony on the Moon, it will be significantly easier and cheaper to get to Mars and potentially other planets as well. This might just be something I heard from a friend of a friend though, so don't quote me on it.
It'll definitely help develop technology that'll be useful for outer solar system missions.
It doesn't make sense as a stop between the Earth and Mars. You have to slow down to enter orbit, then speed back up to leave it. That's a waste of fuel unless there's a good reason to stop there, like for fueling or assembly, but it makes more sense to do that in Earth orbit using distributed life.