it is a very old game. elected officials are temporary.

Q: Why should we have crewed space exploration at all, when science can be done cheaper with probes and satellites?

A: Exploration beyond climate monitoring and comet/asteroid defense is pointless unless we are going to _live_ in space someday. Crewed exploration is the only way to learn how our descendants will live in space, whether that be in free-floating colonies, on asteroids, comets, moons or other planets.

“The Earth is too small and fragile a basket for humanity to keep all its eggs in.”
-Robert Heinlein

“The dinosaurs died because they didn’t have a space program.”
-Larry Niven

{/soap box}

The first company to land 3 people on the Moon, and have them stay for two weeks, and repeat the mission within six months, should receive a prize of 10 billion dollars. Once a company has established a base on the Moon, then NASA should rent facilities on the Moon, NASA should also be required to purchase launch flights to the Moon.

Here is what we should do on the Moon.
http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/publications/default/tech_papers/17th_congress/4_1_33.asp

*Really the way its supposed to work is that NASA should suggest during the budget process what they would like to do and why. If they have a good case for a Moonbase and Mars exploration, and a dollar amount in mind, then the President can include those in his budget proposal to Congress.

Hug a rover.

I want the spacecraft more than the Moon base. I’m pro-human exploration, but I don’t want it at the expense at cutting unmanned missions. If the money can’t happen, scrap the Moon mission. I am doubtful of going to Mars for a long, long time. If I can’t feel real sure about it when I’m reading about this stuff every day, I can see why much of the public is ho-hum or not interested at all.

NASA has an entreched resistance to anyone encroaching on their turf, especialy private enterprise. The thought of some small, start-up company providing reliable manned access to orbit at something close to the fuel cost would be a nightmare, because it would show that all the money has been poured into a shuttle shaped hole for the last 25 years. Now the shuttle is about to be retired, that is beginning to change, butthere really is no private space industry to work with, ESA is wracked by the same problems as NASA, the Russians are skint (and ruled by a crazy KGB man), and the Chinese program is still in it’s infancy.

That reminds me of an episode of Invader Zim when he asks a Martian why they killed their entire race to turn Mars into a rocket ship, and his response was “Cuz it was coooooool.”

This thing just make me wonder what would have happened if they had not canned Apollo as soon as they did, would we have Lunar bases already?

This is what I’m most worried about concerning the return to the moon.
I’d hate to see it get chucked for some lousy reasons, just as Apollo was.

I second that. And well amplified by james.

Thomas Watson (founder of IBM) once said that he could envision a time when there would be as many as 50 computers in the world.

When the mayor of Cleveland saw the telephone at the World’s Fair, he said “what a marvelous invention. Every city should have one.”

Our distant descendants will wonder what took us so long!

1) Planetary astronomy, an oxymoron surely?

2) I was going to quote the the spin off benifits of Apollo in Life-of-Brian- ‘What ‘ave the Romans ever done for us?’ style, but I couldn’t find a quick listing before I posted.
The impulse was prompted by the short story ‘Moon Six’ by Stephen Baxter, a depressing tale about a moonwalker stranded on a parallel world where there is no space program. He becomes wealthy by patenting the devices that make up his suit, but is stuck in a world that remains in a permenant cold war malaise.

Its a good place to point someone that asks what the benifit of going to the moon EVER was, even if the science of the story’s dino-killer villan is a bit iffy.

All it takes sometimes, is a little work. Get the word out. And yes, NASA, I mean you. You need to do a little more marketing and tell everyone why it’s important to go to the Moon and Mars. Not everyone today “gets it”. So please, tell them. It is a worthwhile endeavour, but that’s meaningless unless we get the public, and thus the nation, behind it.

In the same way, there was no economic case for heavier than air flight, I mean did the Wright brothers waste their lives or what? They never made any money out of their preposterous contraption, everyone could see that it would never amount to anything!

And the Suez canal! The arrogance to think that you could link europe and asia! No matter how profitable the trade, you could never re-coup the massive investment needed to build such a thing!

And nothing good could ever come of trying to sail directly round the world from spain to India.

Yup, no economic case at all.

Putting science aside for the moment, funding for space exploration is determined by politicians. Unless some effort is made to gather bipartisan support for the program, it’s going to live or die with the Bush administration. Then there’s the problem that even though Bush made a big show of unveiling the lunar program, he hasn’t followed up on it. He’s expending very little capital (of either the political or financial kind) to support it — pretty much just dropping the initiative on the street, and walking away from it.

Since no leadership on the issue seems to be forthcoming from the White House, maybe the change of command in congress is an opportunity here? This might be a good time to push for a science-based return to the moon, with some sort of bipartisan congressional leadership of the process.

Either that, or we can start a rumor that Saddam hid his WMDs in Shackleton crater…

Lorne
http://geekcounterpoint.net

It’s at least as good a reason as “there are weapons of mass destruction in the desert, hidden from us”.

Gary 7

The vistor centers at KSC, Johnson Space Center (JSC) and at Marshall Spacelfight Center are all run by some sort of corporation. I went to KSC in 1980 and paid a whole 4$ for the entire day, including the guided tour. I notice it is 59$ now.

I loved going to the free JSC vistor center, but once it was taken over by a corporation and Disneyfied I rarely go. Especially at 18$ a pop.

Barely on topic but somehow relevant, it seems to me that NASA has a corporate ‘either you get it or you don’t’ attitude. If you’re into astronomy, fine, but don’t expect them to try to draw you in by promoting space type endeavors. And even in the marketing department of the KSC Visitors’ Centre, the strap line seems to be ‘take it or leave it’. Back in the summer of 2005 I took a family of 5 across the Atlantic for a 2 week stay in Florida (and 3 visits to the KSC). Having bought annual passes for everyone, I would have thought KSC marketing would be talking to us from time to time, keeping in touch. Not a bit of it. They drop me an e-mail when they want me to book tickets for a launch, (where do they think I am?) or buy merchandise. We will return to KSC in August 2007 despite, not because of the efforts of their marketing people.