{"id":18742,"date":"2017-11-10T19:02:11","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T11:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/moon-vs-mars-and-asteroids-watch-space-advocates-debate-where-we-should-go\/"},"modified":"2017-11-10T19:02:11","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T11:02:11","slug":"moon-vs-mars-and-asteroids-watch-space-advocates-debate-where-we-should-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/moon-vs-mars-and-asteroids-watch-space-advocates-debate-where-we-should-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Moon vs. Mars and asteroids: Watch space advocates debate where we should go"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_376171\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-376171\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-376171\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171110-debate2-630x373.jpg\" alt=\"Moon vs. Mars debate\" width=\"630\" height=\"373\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171110-debate2-630x373.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171110-debate2-768x455.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/171110-debate2-1260x747.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-376171\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Moon Express chairman Naveen Jain gestures during a debate with Planetary Resources\u2019 Chris Lewicki and space policy analyst John Logsdon, at right. The Economist\u2019s deputy editor, Tom Standage, stands in as moderator at left. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>SpaceX founder Elon Musk has famously said he\u2019d like to die on Mars&nbsp;\u2014 \u201cjust not on impact.\u201d But where will humans live in space? That was the focus of a good-natured debate that took place at this week\u2019s \u201cNew Space Age\u201d conference at Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight.<\/p>\n<p>Chris Lewicki, president and CEO of Redmond, Wash.-based Planetary Resources, took up the case for going to asteroids and Mars. Seattle-area entrepreneur Naveen Jain, co-founder and chairman of Florida-based Moon Express, spoke for the moon.<\/p>\n<p>And John Logsdon, retired director of George Washington University\u2019s Space Policy Institute, argued for the null hypothesis: that humans would, by and large, stick with Earth for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n<p>Jain put in the most hand-wavingly flamboyant performance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMoon has all the resources that we need,\u201d he said. \u201cIt has water. And water is the beginning of the things you can do, right? You can now have hydrogen and oxygen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He noted that Japanese researchers recently identified a huge lava tube on the moon that could house a underground base, protected from surface radiation and meteorite impacts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou could have a whole New York inside it, with pumping oxygen and water there,\u201d Jain said.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers might even be able to edit the human genome to provide the ability to convert space radiation into useful energy, Jain said: \u201cNot only will we become completely radiation-resistant, in the evening, you\u2019ll be holding the hand of your honey and say, \u2018Honey, you want to go for a walk and get some radiation, and that will be our dinner.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; overflow: hidden;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FEconomistEvents%2Fvideos%2F1727337633966565%2F&amp;show_text=0&amp;width=560\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Lewicki took issue with the idea that the moon has <em>all<\/em> the resources that settlers will need. It\u2019s not clear exactly how much water ice is mixed into lunar soil, or how easy it\u2019d be to extract it, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Getting resources from near-Earth asteroids would be much easier, said Lewicki, whose company aims to start mining asteroids sometime in the next decade.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe asteroids are the lowest-hanging fruit in the solar system from a resource standpoint,\u201d he said. Those resources could facilitate moving on to Mars.<\/p>\n<p>But why make the trip? Logsdon took issue with the vision of having millions of people living and working in space, which has been advanced by Musk as well as by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s the business case for a Martian economy? \u2026 A million-person city? Why? Who would want to do that?\u201d Logsdon said.<\/p>\n<p>He acknowledged that there will probably be bases built on the moon as well as Mars, but said they\u2019d be more along the lines of Antarctic outposts than an underground metropolis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a more plausible case for the economics of the moon than for Mars, but it\u2019s a tenuous case,\u201d Logsdon said.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"callout clearfix\"><strong>Read more:<\/strong> Vice president vows return to the moon and \u2018boots on Mars\u2019<\/h4>\n<p>During the discussion, Earth2Orbit founder Susmita Mohanty spoke up for looking beyond the economics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we needed a more diverse panel,\u201d she said. \u201cI hear this \u2018Let\u2019s monetize the hell out of Earth, let\u2019s monetize the hell out of the moon, let\u2019s monetize the hell out of Mars.\u2019 You know, I want to go live on other planets for more than just business purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the end, the conference crowd leaned toward Lewicki\u2019s portfolio of asteroids and Mars as the most attractive choice, but even Lewicki admitted that the real-world path beyond Earth orbit would be more complex than a \u201cmoon vs. Mars\u201d fork in the road.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe context of what we\u2019re having a fun discussion about is a false choice,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like arguing, \u2018Which city is the better city, New York or Paris? Choose one. The other one doesn\u2019t exist.\u2019 We\u2019ve never had to make that choice in our history. \u2026 The correct answer is \u2018all of the above.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Correction for 10:55 a.m. PT Nov. 11:<\/strong> A previous version of this report provided an incorrect title for Naveen Jain, who is chairman of Moon Express.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>GeekWire was one of the media sponsors of The Economist\u2019s&nbsp;\u201cNew Space Age\u201d&nbsp;conference. For videos from the conference, check out the&nbsp;Facebook page for The Economist Events.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moon Express chairman Naveen Jain gestures during a debate with Planetary Resources\u2019 Chris Lewicki and space policy analyst John Logsdon, at right. The Economist\u2019s deputy editor, Tom Standage, stands in as moderator at left. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle) SpaceX founder Elon Musk has famously said he\u2019d like to die on Mars&nbsp;\u2014 \u201cjust not on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[291,367,625],"class_list":["post-18742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-commercial-space","tag-mars","tag-moon"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}