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404 points voxleone | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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namlem ◴[] No.45657019[source]
This would be such a dumb move on the government's part. "Lose the new space race" is ridiculous PR-brain. We are not racing to the same goal! China is trying to land on the moon, we are trying to establish a permanent presence. There is no value to merely returning to the moon to say we did it, and Starship is the only vehicle that can plausibly deliver huge quantities of cargo to the lunar surface.
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random3 ◴[] No.45657163[source]
What’s the main motivation for the moon? Is it a better location than the international space station? What’s the reasoning there?
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1. creshal ◴[] No.45657338[source]
The ISS served all political purposes it could, and microgavity research can be served by private entities these days. (Especially considering that a Starship has half the internal pressurized volume of the entire ISS, at approximately one thousandth the cost.)

A permanent Moon base would allow research opportunities that private LEO stations can't: ISRU, low gravity research, the far side of the Moon offers unique opportunities for astronomy (any spectrum), etc. pp. Long term, who knows what additional opportunities it opens up.

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2. standardUser ◴[] No.45661610[source]
The ISS has (and has always had) a multi-year backlog of experiments, with no shortage of orgs willing to pay the 6 or 7 figure fee.
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3. creshal ◴[] No.45665719[source]
Cool, then they can pool together and build a commercial station. There's now multiple companies capable of building them.