The news is full of it, excitement seems high, and I really don't get it. I'm not against space-related research, but why suddenly the moon? And why send people there? Can someone fill me in on what's to be gained or why one might be excited about it?
Allow me to use the linked article for my questions.
There have been three primary drivers of renewed interest in the Moon. The first was the discovery and confirmation in the 1990s and early 2000s that water ice is likely to exist at the lunar poles in permanently shadowed craters. The presence of abundant water, providing oxygen and hydrogen resources, has given space agencies a new reason to explore the poles.
Yea but so what? Hydrogen is literally the most common thing in the universe, no fucking way there is also some on the moon 🤯. Then what's so spectacular about moon ice, water, or even oxygen? And why does it need people to explore it?
A second factor has been the rise of China's space program, which has sent a series of ambitious robotic missions to the Moon that have both landed on the far side and returned samples from the lunar surface. China has made no secret of its interest in sending astronauts to the Moon, leading to competing efforts between NASA's Artemis Program and China's lunar station goals.
Again why? Is this some repetition of the Cold War Soviet-US competition?
Finally, there has been some interest from private companies in the commercial development of the lunar surface, both to exploit resources there but also for other purposes. This has stimulated investment in private companies to provide transportation to the lunar surface, including ispace, Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and Firefly.
Exploiting resources has to be a joke, right? Do they want to sell us the newly found moon water? The only point I get is the tourism aspect. Because, of course, I always encourage billionaires to pursue dangerous hobbies 😊
Space is the final frontier. It's where we'll be doing the rest of our exploration of the universe. The reason you would do that is not so much to discover new life and new civilizations but to discover new phenomenons and technologies that can help us better understand the universe, help us live better/easier, help us experience cool new things, etc.
It's the closest celestial body, so it's great for practice. Next up, Mars. Both of these are solid, so we can land there and check them out. Get an idea for what works and what doesn't, how to build habitats in space, etc.
Water is one of the main substances you need for life as we know it. Essentially all life on Earth needs water to some degree, so any time we find water somewhere we get excited because what if it's alien life? Wouldn't that be cool? Aside from that, oxygen, hydrogen, and water in space is good to have, because then you don't have to carry it from Earth. If we set up a base on Luna, maybe we can drink water that's already there, and use hydrogen and oxygen that's already there to power machinery. It's expensive as fuck to get anything into space, so if you don't have to carry something to your destination because there's already some there, that's just better.
For governments, it's part dick measuring competition, part trying to get their names in the history books, part trying to not be left behind. For scientists and the rest of us, it's part livelihood, part curiosity. Space is hard to deal with, so we come up with all sorts of stuff to let us live up there. Here's a list of a bunch of stuff that stems from the space race: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/space-race-inventions-we-use-every-day-were-created-for-space-exploration/39580591/
There's a bunch of shit in space that we have very little of, or is hard to reach, on Earth. Not necessarily water, I went over that earlier. But all kinds of other stuff, including He3 which is useful used in nuclear fusion.