A scientific proposition, not an ethical one.
I know. But his particular (and, I am sure, incontrovertible) assertion quoted here is a matter of an “is,” not an “ought.” It in no way invalidates or even contradicts Heinlein’s position.
So what ever happened to the “space elevator” idea? If we, or China, were to start building any sort of large scale or permanent structures on the moon wouldn’t this need to be completed first? Or would it just be more efficient to just send everything up via rockets?
The “space elevator” idea is still around. But the best way to put up large-scale structures on the Moon would probably be to send up manufacturing equipment and build them in situ out of Lunar regolith; such equipment could be sent via Earth-launched rockets, although sending them by rockets launched from the top station of a space elevator would make it cheaper by orders of magnitude.
I don’t see why a contradiction has to be deontic in nature.
Maybe not, but your position does: “By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man – man himself.” — Heinlein
I had to look that word up, and now that I have I still don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
That means it might be difficult for the human race to survive – not that there’s any reason (based in ethics or values) why we shouldn’t try.
Back to the OP.
Sure, the Chinese could spend umpteen billion dollars and put a man on the moon and bring him back.
But would that really spark a new space race?
A Chinese moon shot would be a stunt, just like the American moon shots were. Nothing wrong with stunts, exactly, except they cost a lot of money. I suppose the Chinese moon stunt could inspire the American people to fund their own moon stunts, but would that get us anywhere? Sending a few dozen more people to the moon and back isn’t going to accomplish anything except to prove that it can be done.
The 50s fantasies of moon bases by the 21st century turned out to be fantasies, because they just handwaved away the problem of specific impulse. We don’t have a single stage to orbit vehicle, and even if we develop one in the next few decades it’s going to be right at the edge of the technicaly possible. A rocket you build in your backyard (even with a billion dollar budget) that you fuel up, take off for the moon, land, take off again, and land back on earth is right out. But that’s what would be needed. Bill Gates is much much richer than Delos D. Harriman could ever dream, but Bill Gates and his $32 billion nest egg couldn’t build a moon rocket.
I’m pretty confident that someday humans will travel to the moon and Mars. But it’s a lot harder than we thought back in the 50s and 60s, and the rewards don’t seem to exist. Barring worldwide economic collapse, the future global economy will orders of magnitude larger than it is now, so large that we can fund moon colonies and manned exploration of Mars just for the fun of it, like the people today who train and save their money for years to climb Mt. Everest for the fun of it. But spending large fractions of the national budget on spectacles seems misguided.
See post #13.
See also here. (pdf)
To build permanent Moonbases? Not at all. They can be built out of local materials. All we need send there is the equipment. Or possibly just the equipment to make the equipment.
Arg.
OK, but once you’ve built your igloo out of regolith, what then?
What’s the PURPOSE of the moon base?
Science? Why can’t you do that with automation? Researching how to survive in a closed ecology? Wouldn’t it be better to do those experiments on, say, Earth? Mining? Even if the moon were solid gold it wouldn’t make economic sense to mine the moon. Getting our sorry asses of of Earth in case of nuclear holocaust/dinosaur-killer asteroid/grey goo? But even after a nuclear holocaust, wouldn’t it be easier to live in an underground bunker on Earth than an underground bunker on the moon? And we could build thousands of underground bunkers on Baffin Island for the cost of one underground bunker on the moon.
Several possibilities, some of them discussed in this thread:
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Mining – e.g., Helium-3 (the ideal nuclear fusion fuel, scarce here, abundant there).
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Low-gravity and/or low-atmospheric-pressure manufacturing industries.
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Solar-power collection arrays.
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Transshipment point for launching colonization (not just exploration) ships throughout the Solar System (easier to build them on and launch them from a low-gravity but not microgravity surface than on/from Earth’s surface or in/from high orbit).
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Once such colonies are established, transshipment point for commerce between the colonies and Earth.
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Military installations that could threaten targets on Earth’s surface.
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Retirement communities (low gravity is good for old folks).
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Agriculture, under glass domes that get more sunlight than you can under an atmosphere. (In Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Luna’s main economic value to Earth is as a food source. Heinlein grossly underestimated the productive potential of Earth-based agriculture, but let’s not hijack this.)
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Astronomical observatories on the Far Side, shielded from Earth’s reflected light and EM radiation.
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Tourism.
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Just plain living space. Not attractive to you or me, perhaps, but some would be eager to settle there, and to those born and raised there it would be Home.
Meh…who cares what they do.
We been there done that in 1969.
IF they want to out do the US then they need to send people to Mars…or be responsible for colonizing the Moon. Or some other HUGE accomplishment. Going to the Moon just doesn’t have the pizazz that it used to have imo.
Helium-3? Not gonna happen in our lifetimes.
Vacuum/low gravity factories? Maaaaaybe, but then you’ve got to ship the crap to Earth. Won’t be profitable unless there’s a large non-Earth market, and that doesn’t exist, because there are no factories, because the market doesn’t exist…
Solar power? Again, you’ve got to beam the power to Earth, and you’re getting at most half the solar output on the moon compared to orbit. I suppose the advantage is that you can make the panels out of regolith.
Transhipment, see factories.
Military bases? What do they accomplish that ICMBs and SLBMs can’t accomplish?
Retirement communities? Well, sure. Once you’ve got Luna City all civilized, sure. But that’s waaaaaay over the horizon.
Agriculture? Seriously? You’re gonna ship WHEAT from the Moon to Earth? Like I said, you couldn’t ship gold from the Moon to the Earth profitably.
Astronomy, sure. Except build the telescopes and forget the humans.
Tourism, sure. And this is the only really sensible one, except it will require a global economy orders of magnitude larger than the 2008 global economy. Nowadays we have Mt. Everest tourism, Antarctica tourism, in 2108 they’ll have moon tourism. But a tourist ticket to the moon will still cost the equivalent of millions and millions of dollars, the only difference is that there will be millions and millions of multimillionaires who could pay that price.
Living space? Why not live on Baffin Island? It’s about 1000 times cheaper. Sure, I can imagine in the future someone building condos on the moon just because it’s totally fucking awesome, and they’ve got the money. The same person could also build a condo on the summit of Mt. Everest for 1/100th the price.
Anyway, the point is that the costs just to get a pound to the moon is so high that all of this is moot. And the costs aren’t likely to drop by an order of magnitude any time soon unless you’re gonna build a space elevator, which from all accounts currently would require unobtanium. Materials science is advancing to the point where unobtanium can’t be ruled out, but tell you what, call me back when we’ve got it, not before.
In order for moon factories to be possible we’d need some other method than rockets to get from Earth to the moon. In order for moon tourism to be possible we’d need a much larger economy. There’s no possible way to make money at this sort of thing for the next couple decades, and governmental priming the pump isn’t going to help. We need advances in basic science of all sorts, and a much more prosperous earth before we can contemplate such a thing. And even then it won’t be profitable, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be worth doing.
The Chinese seem to be backing away from manned spaceflight. They haven’t done anything since their first orbital flight. I guess they are realizing there’s no propaganda value to it anymore. In any case, they are far too practical to blow $50 billion on a meaningless stunt.
Cite?
Massive destructive impact at target without releasing radiation into everybody’s shared atmosphere.
Please read this. (pdf)
“There’s always a bigger fish.” - Qui-Gon Jinn
Other than their second orbital flight. 
Their third manned spaceflight will be taking place this year and is to include a space walk.
“We will go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
- John F. Kennedy
Why go back to the moon? Because you need frontiers. You need to stretch yourself and do the things that are hard. You need heroes to inspire children to be something other than basketball players. You need to expand frontiers, to always have a dangerous ‘out there’ that can challenge you and bring you new visions, new experiences, and even more challenges.
We need to do it because we’ve become a bunch of risk-averse pussies more interested in gazing at our own navels and eliminating every bit of risk from our lives.
We need to do it because Kennedy’s sentiment has become alien to far too many people.
We need to do it because civilizations shrivel up and die when they stop looking outward and start existing for comfort and bread and circuses.
When I was a kid, we expected people to take on hard challenges. It was a cliche to say, “If we can put a man on the moon, we can do X”. Today, you’re more likely to hear “We can’t do that. Hell, we can’t even put a man on the moon any more.”