Will there be a million people on the moon by 2060?

[donglepuss]

What do you think????

 

[fresh_42]

That is 78 people a day. No way.

 

[berkeman]

What do you think????

What would be their motivation?

 

[russ_watters]

What would be their motivation?

Millionth customer gets free groceries.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Is ChatGPT asking questions now?

There won't even be a million people in Antarctica by then,
Heck, I'd be surprised if there were a million people in Detroit.

 

[berkeman]

Is ChatGPT asking questions now?

Hey, Hey! Who you calling a chatbot?!

 

[fresh_42]

Heck, I'd be surprised if there were a million people in Detroit.

No problem if I get my time machine working.

 

[phinds]

What do you think????

Lunacy.

 

[Klystron]

A 2060 timeline seems much too short to build self-sustained habitats on and within Luna. One million inhabitants seems like an arbitrary figure without logical basis.

 

[pinball1970]

What do you think????

A base perhaps for a "team"scientists/astronauts and engineers?

This from last month

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230317-the-epic-quest-to-build-a-permanent-moon-base

 

[berkeman]

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230317-the-epic-quest-to-build-a-permanent-moon-base

Looks like they are a bit confused about where to point their comm antennas...

 

[pinball1970]

They had much more imagination for this sort of thing in the 1970s.

1971

1975

As for Moon attire

 

[Vanadium 50]

Looks like they are a bit confused about where to point their comm antennas...

Sidelobes, man, sidelobes.

 

[CityguyUSA]

What do you think????

No air, no water, no energy, no concrete, no groceries and no way of getting anything other than flying them up from earth. What do you think?

 

[Vanadium 50]

No air, no water, no energy, no concrete, no groceries

Hear the one about the restaurant on the moon? Good food...but no atmosphere.

<rimshot>

 

[pinball1970]

Hear the one about the restaurant on the moon? Good food...but no atmosphere.

<rimshot>

 

[Office_Shredder]

Looks like they are a bit confused about where to point their comm antennas...

View attachment 325118

What makes you think they want to communicate with earth?

 

[CityguyUSA]

What makes you think they want to communicate with earth?

They can't make it through dinner without using their cell phones.

 

[StatGuy2000]

I am quite confident to say that I do not foresee any sustained human population of any appreciable size outside of Earth for at least another century at the earliest. The logistics and economics involved in maintaining such a population would simply be too onerous. In fact, it is entirely possible that we may never be able to establish a sustainable human population outside of Earth.

I think it is far more likely to have a sustained population of robots on the moon (perhaps being used to exploit mineral resources from the moon which can then be shipped back to Earth, assuming that there are deposits that are actually of worth and value from the moon). I also see a potential sustained population of robots on Mars or other planets within our solar system as well.

 

[CityguyUSA]

Robots need repairs. I don't know how feasible it would be to even do what your suggesting. We'd have to run out of whatever on earth before robots on foreign bodies would make sense. Minerals would have to be like incredible easy to get at because of wear and tear on robots. Think about the size of the machinery today that does mining and that's just the excavating then it has to be processed. You wouldn't want to pay to haul waste back to earth and no robot is going to be able to know what to dig or how to build tunnels or pits, etc. it would be incredibly overwhelming and where do you get the energy from?

 

[BWV]

I think it is far more likely to have a sustained population of robots on the moon (perhaps being used to exploit mineral resources from the moon which can then be shipped back to Earth, assuming that there are deposits that are actually of worth and value from the moon). I also see a potential sustained population of robots on Mars or other planets within our solar system as well.

ISTM its always easier to dig deeper on earth than to try to bring materials down from orbit. The deepest mines on earth go down a few KM, whereas oil&gas wells regularly go deeper than 10KM. Easier to send robots 5-10km underground to mine than send them to the moon or a near-earth asteroid. Think any future space mining will solely be for materials used off-earth

 

[russ_watters]

Robots need repairs.

No they don't. We don't repair our space robots now, and I see no reason why that would change.

This isn't to say I think space mining will ever be viable.

 

[Rive]

What do you think????

Assuming this question is about living people?
If no, then yes, there may be.

I think one of the most popular services related to the Moon will be about burials (of small samples of ashes, at $/mg price).

 

[StatGuy2000]

Robots need repairs. I don't know how feasible it would be to even do what your suggesting. We'd have to run out of whatever on earth before robots on foreign bodies would make sense. Minerals would have to be like incredible easy to get at because of wear and tear on robots. Think about the size of the machinery today that does mining and that's just the excavating then it has to be processed. You wouldn't want to pay to haul waste back to earth and no robot is going to be able to know what to dig or how to build tunnels or pits, etc. it would be incredibly overwhelming and where do you get the energy from?

I should note that my reply earlier in post #19 was based on what scenario was more likely in 2060:

1. a million people on the moon (or more broadly, any large sustained population outside of Earth), or
2. a colony of robots on the moon (or elsewhere in the solar system) harvesting resources from the moon (for the benefit of humans).

I'm arguing that scenario #2 was far more likely than scenario #1. But I concede that neither scenarios are especially likely.

I should also note that your reply above is based on the assumption of the capabilities of robots as of today, not their (potential) capabilities as of 2060.

It is possible that we could have specialized robots tasked with the repair of robots used for space mining. Also, pattern recognition capabilities could theoretically be developed which would enable robots to be able to identify minerals and then plan to dig and build tunnels or pits, etc. As for energy, battery energy could (potentially) be developed that has the capability to store, say, solar energy captured from the sun.

Of course, whether it would ever be economical to haul and transport minerals from the moon to earth with robotic technology is an open question.

 

[jbriggs444]

The most plausible reason I can come up with to put a million people on the moon is vanity. You put a million people there to demonstrate that you can. You occupy those people with maintaining your lunar Taj Mahal. Perhaps you visit occasionally when you want a high profile vacation or temporary shelter from extradition.

Or, perhaps it could be a place to stash prisoners under ambiguous jurisdiction.

 

[russ_watters]

Assuming this question is about living people?
If no, then yes, there may be.

I think one of the most popular services related to the Moon will be about burials (of small samples of ashes, at $/mg price).

I think that's illegal.

 

[BWV]

I went to a tech conference in Marin County back in 2012, the kind of resort hotel where the best and brightest In Silicon Valley need to have the strawberries on the breakfast buffet labeled ‘gluten free’. Panelists and people in idle conversation were all seriously talking about dying on Mars, like there would be a one-way shuttle available in their dotage.

 

[sbrothy]

It's a logistical impossibility. Like evacuating Earth while babies are being born left and right. Even if they found an antimatter mine they'd need only physicists, technicians and military to protect the investment.

Why they'd put someone like me up there is beyond me. But yeh, when they asked for volunteers for a oneway trip to mars there were no shortage.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I am not sure if it's worth posting, since this was obviously a post-and-run by the OP, but this works out to 75 people per day (assuming we start now). That is what, 4000x what was done for Apollo?

 

[sbrothy]

I think the only true believer is Elon Musk but I think he read too much L. Ron Hubbard as a child.

 

[fresh_42]

I am not sure if it's worth posting, since this was obviously a post-and-run by the OP, but this works out to 75 people per day (assuming we start now). That is what, 4000x what was done for Apollo?

I had 78 starting 2025 to give a little bit of a lead. But I liked your comparison with poor Detroit - pun intended.

 

[Vanadium 50]

There's some wiggle room - do we count Apollos 8, 10 and 13 as close enough?

Another scaling argument: in today's dollars, the US spent $20B per person on the moon. A million people is $20,000T - essentially 1000 years GDP. To put a million people on the moon also requires us to do better by a factor of several thousand.

 

[Rive]

I think that's illegal.

It's a blooming business

 

[jbriggs444]

To put a million people on the moon also requires us to do better by a factor of several thousand.

It's not that bad. We can shave off at least a factor of two by sending up young pregnant women. Along with a handful of dedicated males.

 

[pinball1970]

It's not that bad. We can shave off at least a factor of two by sending up young pregnant women. Along with a handful of dedicated males.

Smart thinking, although space flight probably not recommended for anything beyond second trimester.

Take off music suggestion would be..

 

[fresh_42]

It's a blooming business

I can see the headlines of tomorrow's newspaper:

"Astronaut in the ISS killed by a golden tooth!"

 

[bob012345]

Any large scale expansion of our technological civilization into the Solar System will have to make use of the Moon as a waystation, a depot, a source of building materials or even water and oxygen. I don't know if there will be a million people there by 2060 but I'd be surprised if there weren't a lot say ~10k.

 

[kulas]

I wish I could live on another planet other than earth. a small world cup

 

[PeroK]

Any large scale expansion of our technological civilization into the Solar System will have to make use of the Moon as a waystation, a depot, a source of building materials or even water and oxygen. I don't know if there will be a million people there by 2060 but I'd be surprised if there weren't a lot say ~10k.

I'd be surprised if there was anyone.

 

[bob012345]

I'd be surprised if there was anyone.

And I'd be surprised if I was surprised at anything in 2060.

 

[Grelbr42]

Y'all are way too timid at predicting the future of space.

There is an old puzzle about yeast that doubles every half hour, and fills the container at 7PM. When is the container half full? 6:30PM.

There are four basic curves to apply to prediction of things such as this.

First is an exponential decay, the blue line. This is the case when interest in something dies off. Space travel is unlikely to follow this curve since there is a great deal of money in it. Today it is making profits for lots of companies.
Second is a constant curve, the dark orange line here. Again, this is unlikely for space travel.
Third is linear growth. SpaceX is already well past this.
Finally there is exponential growth. This follows when the activity becomes self-increasing.

Starlink alone is quite interesting. They are already making $300 million/year. The cost to put up the expected satts for the network is $600 million.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnko...booking-over-300-millionyear/?sh=43ee0da27063

SpaceX is already well past self sustaining. Musk can afford quite a bit of rocket development with even those numbers. Falcon Heavy can take 64 metric tons to low Earth orbit. His plans for Mars include something like a FH launch per day starting in a few years. And he has bigger rockets in the testing phase.

He can afford to blow them up on a regular basis. Blowing up rockets is a big part of the process of learning how to build them.

In 2023, SpaceX is doing roughly a launch per week. This is double what they were doing in 2021. They are on the exponential curve. And their doubling time seems to be about 2 years.

And yes, lots of people want to go. For a variety of reasons. There are lots of technological manufacturing type reasons. Lots of things possible when you have plenty-o-free vacuum. And when you have sunshine not interrupted by clouds. And when there is no environment to pollute. Want to store a million tons of arsenic? Put it over there and just watch where you walk.

And yes, tourism will be a thing, if the price gets low enough. The energy costs to low Earth orbit are similar to the energy costs from New York to Australia. Getting to the Moon roughly doubles it. Ordinary people ought to be able to afford a trip to the moon. If they can, and if it becomes as safe as commercial flight, millions will.

 

[russ_watters]

Y'all are way too timid at predicting the future of space.

There is an old puzzle about yeast that doubles every half hour, and fills the container at 7PM. When is the container half full? 6:30PM.

And at 7:00 the yeast goes dormant.

This is just Fun With Math! that has little relation to the issue of space travel. Heck, maybe 7:00 was 1972?

 

[phinds]

This is just Fun With Math! that has little relation to the issue of space travel.

 

[bob012345]

And yes, tourism will be a thing, if the price gets low enough.

And when the chance of being blown to bits is near zero which will be hard to achieve with rocket technology.

 

[phinds]

And yes, tourism will be a thing, if the price gets low enough.

No, not if surviveability is unlikely. Your whole post is glossing over / ignoring a whole host of factors. At best you are simply hand-waving away all the dangers. As Russ said, all you've done is a just an exercise in math.

 

[Vanadium 50]

There were two missions in 1969. one in 1970, two in 1971 and two in 1972. So it's hard to see how the time constant for an exponential is short, but even if it is very long, one expects to have had over 100 missions by now, And there were 7. Six successful.

If you toss in 8 and 10 as being at least as successful as 13, you get 1-3-2-2 missions per year. Excel tells me the best fit is +10% per year. Um...OK.

This model predicts by now we would have 3290 missions to date and almost a launch every day. Neither is the case. This model predicts by 2060 only 300,000 people will have gone to the moon (not that they are there at the same time then) and it will be at least a decade later before that number hits a million.

So even "fun with math" doesn't support this. Any realistic model will be, well, more realistic.

 

[fresh_42]

Will there be a million people on the moon by 2060?​

If a million people are willing to pay enormous amounts of money only to run around in a dusty and sandy desert, then I should seriously consider buying some land in the Sahara. The weight will only be a matter of latex.

 

[BWV]

People in the 1960s had the example of ~50 years from the Wright brothers to commercial jet travel, and they projected this same trajectory for space travel (hence 2001). But the economics and technological difficulties are far different. Very difficult to come up with compelling economic reasons for humans to leave Earth

 

[DrGreg]

you get 1-3-2-2 missions per year. Excel tells me the best fit is +10% per year.

But there should be a string of 50 zeroes added to the end of that. What does Excel say then?

 

[Frabjous]

I like to lie with statistics.

In February of 2023, Tulsa Oklahoma (metro area ~1M) had ~200k airline passengers and shipped around 8M lbs of freight.
https://flytulsa.com/wp-content/upl...nue-and-Statistics-Schedule-February-2023.pdf

That is roughly 40,000,000 lbs.
at 100$/lb (an order of magnitude smaller than today’s LOW orbit costs) that‘s $4B per month.
This ignores trains, trucks and fluid flow.

edit: I meant if Tulsa was on the moon.