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Mars: six months away at the fastest transfer. Requires multiple launches just to get the vehicle ready for the trip. If something goes wrong, everyone very likely to just fucking die.
Moon: 3 days away pretty much always. Entirely possible to send scouting parties in lightweight vehicles that can be ready in one launch. Can come home in abort shuttle if something goes wrong. Really close so good practice at making people not die from radiation and potential issues with low gravity.
Don’t get the hype with mars. It’s nearly identical to the moon in terms of being able to support human life, meaning neither can without massive work. But mars is so much further away that it’s not even funny.
PS, his first starship exploded halfway to space because he didn’t have a flame diverter like every other huge rocket has had for the passed 50 years. Forgetting basic shit like that does not breed confidence that all of the equipment you need is even going to be there.
Mars has more gravity. I think lunar gravity is low enough to still potentially cause serious problems for humans. I’m not an expert though.
I also think that whenever lunar colonies are going to take off, it’s going to be a real shit show. It’s too easy to put a rail gun over there and take out whole countries. Whenever Ww3 starts, it’s definitely going to leak into space but not as far as mars. Mars is true frontier while earth has a claim to the moon in a way.
It takes 3 days to get to the moon.
Any weapons on the moon would be largely ineffective due to the orbit and the sheer distance involved. 300,000 kilometers makes hitting anything specific on the earth a pipe dream.
It’s still way easier to just launch a point to point icbm for an attack. 30 minutes of flight time is a lot better than a few days.
As for gravity, we don’t know how low gravity for extended periods will effect humans. At least on the moon, if it turns out to be a critical problem, we can send people back in a few days. Mars could take up to 20 months just to get a transfer window and get back. Any mars colony needs to be completely self sufficient from day one, whereas a lunar colony can be built up over time and supplied much more readily until we can figure out how to grow enough food and recycle/harvest enough water.
You can easily take out all enemy satellites if you have a proper colony with defensible positions on the moon I think. You could literally kessler syndrome the bitch and have the only satellite in town. It’s definitely a valid strategic position.
I also think the fact that it takes so long to get to is a plus for some people. If war breaks out or musk starts abusing human right, they won’t hesitate to grab his moon colony. This won’t happen on mars, it’s just too far.
Not that your points aren’t completely valid but you are asking for possible reasons mars might be more attractive than to moon to some. Also, twice the gravity is nothing to scoff at.
That being said, I’m craving any kind of space exploration. It does seem nuts that we don’t have any kind of permanent installations on the moon yet. I’m still pissed the cunt spent 40 b on twitter instead of space.
You can blow up all the satellites in space from earth way faster than you could from the moon. I agree with the gravity thing, but for all intents and purposes, the moon might as well be mars as far a war is concerned.
Hitting strategic targets is a time sensitive matter in a war, and there is simply too much distance between the earth and moon for any moon based weapon to be viable. Space based weapons against ground or air targets are largely pointless anyway, as the orbital period at LEO is about 25 minutes, and it takes several minutes for something to go from orbit to ground. So your satellite only passes over your target every 30 minutes, and it take more minutes for your munitions to reach the target once released, and you need a dedicated satellite for each target you want to hit. An ICBM can be anywhere on earth in 30 minutes and any of them can be targeted at any random point you want.
These issues only get exaggerated when trying to fire from the moon. The earth rotates every 24 hours, but it’s going to take days for anything you fire to even reach earth. So you have to fire your munition not at your target, but where your target will be on earth when it’s beneath the moon, when your munition will reach earth. It’s like trying to hit a fly glued to a ball that’s spinning, while you’re on the opposite end of a 2 football fields and you’ve got an air rifle.
Likely any war in space is going to be relegated to controlling area on the body in question. A war between china and the US won’t have a US moon base firing on the china on earth, it’ll have the war on earth, and the moon bases fighting between themselves.
Unfortunately, he can’t just push them out of an airlock yet.
