Creating bases on the Moon

 

NASA outlines this $20 billion project to build bases on the moon. 

The speaker in the video mentions RTG's - which are nuclear power sources for the base. The nuclear industry views space as a new market. Imagine the dirty nuclear fabrication process at DoE labs across the country and then a series of launches that could be a disaster for life on Earth if there are accidents on take off.

The US has had a plan for military base control of the moon since the 1950's. 

The US (and some allies) are in a race to take control of the moon before China & Russia can get there. 

In this 1989 Congressional study 'Military Space Forces' they discuss the Earth-Moon gravity well and state that who ever covers the top of the well would be able to control access on and off the planet earth. This has relevance not only for deciding who can control the Earth below, but also who can mine the sky, etc.

Thus all of this is connected to current US mission to the moon. 

Moon has helium-3 and water which the competitors will want to control. So we now face a duplication of the current global war system on Earth moving into space.

Mars has magnesium, cobalt, uranium, etc and the nuclear-powered rovers driving around Mars are doing planetary mapping and soil ID operations.

Everyone says that a moon-based colony would be a launch pad for deeper space exploration and mining operations so again 'control' becomes a priority for those who have such ambitions.

I find it sad that we have competing space missions, goals, and priorities. 

I'd wish we'd go off into space when we were a more mature human race here on Earth rather than carrying the 'bad seed of war, greed, and environmental degradation' that we've sown into the depths of our Mother Earth. 

I'd rather we had a global informed debate about what kind of seed we should carry into space when we do go - and then go as united and clear thinking Earth people. Like envisioned in Star Trek.

Imagine the money for human development on Earth we'd  save if we went as one people rather than competing national blocs spending massive amounts of taxpayer funds.

This has been the work of the Global Network since our founding in 1992 - to help usher in such a needed global consciousness, debate and organizing. 

We also need a renewed effort to create international space law that bans weapons/war in space, regulates launches into the shrinking and contested parking spaces in Lower Earth Orbit (LEO), renewed treaties for the planetary bodies and determining just who can benefit from resource extraction in space. 

Let's not create a new 'Wild West Show' in space.

Bruce