Discovery of water on moon boosts prospects for permanent lunar base

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mrstickball said:
Given the horrible spending practices of the US, we could.

The real key to colonization is to reduce the costs of launching payload to orbit. Currently, it costs the US between $5,000-$10,000 per KG of material launched into orbit. However, if we built a space elevator (Cost <$250 billion), the cost would reduce to $200-$400 per KG. Such a reduction would easily pay for itself by the country that did this - At such cut-rate prices, space agencies and private firms would flock to the country that had the elevator, as it could easily beat any other offers to launch satellites into space.

From there, the cost to colonize the moon, or anywhere, would be a fraction of the ~$1 trillion of current projections for a basic lunar base.

I agree that the elevator needs to be built but I have to be honest in saying I'm skeptical that it would come in anywhere near budget.  The engineering challenges are pretty immense and the scale of the project is really on a whole new level beyond anything humanity has done before.  None of that is a reason not to try, but they are damn good reasons to be very sure we can commit to the project (both politically and financially) before we start.

To me a space elevator would be the first truly space-age structure built by humanity.  What I mean by this is sort of tiered building capacity for a society...it starts at building fires working its way up to make-shift tents, adobe houses, large public structures of increasing craftmanship, and then a big leap to skyscrapers.  From skyscrapers we move to monolith structures like man-made islands (which we've already done), and now we are looking at building the first structure (term used loosely) that would simultaneously be...and not be... on the earth. 

It really is a whole new step akin to the leap to skyscrapers some 125 years ago.  Granted I don't think we will be seeing a space elevator in every medium sized city in the next 125 years.....but the potential impact to the human race could go far beyond that of skyscrapers.