Great. First, The Decider announces the US will return to the moon, and build a base there, now the Russians say the same thing. The moon? Dusty, empty, dirty, useless? WTF? The moon is not on the way to Mars. We have been to the moon, we got the t-shirt.
Either both the Americans and the Russians are going moon-nuts at the same time, or they are racing to get to the monolith.
Don’t leave out the Chinese. They plan a manned mission to the moon by 2020.
How much will it cost? For the right price, I would say it’s worth it to inspire a whole generation of schoolchildren as well as for the sake of national pride.
Ok with me. They can all go there. I’m not a cold warrior but I am a Ukrainian. And while they havn’t tryed to starve any of my family member of late, they are begining to annoy me again. I have $5 right here I will send in to send the whole bloody country into space.
No, but it’s arguably a good place to practice in-situ resource utilization and general habitation activities with a chance to evacuate to Earth in a (relatively) short time if need be.
(Not to be accused of drive-by posting, but I’ll probably be away for most of the next few days. I thought I’d comment, nonetheless.)
It’s not just about going to the Moon. The Russians are planning to set up a permanent base.
As are the Chinese (see here, here, and here).
And the Americans.
And the Japanese.
If it’s a pointless idea, it would appear to be rooted in some highly unusual form of contagious madness.
I don’t think it’s that it would be pointless. It just isn’t worth the trouble. All of the reasons that folks came up with in this thread didn’t really convince me. And Pochacco (post #33) seems to me to point out the reality.
Evacuate what from the Earth? How many people do you plan on sending, and just how the heck are they going to survive in the long term in places you can’t grow crops?
There’s no point in pretending the Moon or Mars are options for the survival of human civilization. Let’s be honest about why we want to go there: it’s cool. I’m all for that. I’ll happily pay tax dollars to do it.
Yes, please, let us waste massive amounts of time, resources, and years of man-hours from some of the world’s most intelligent people to send four guys to a worthless ball of rock for a week, so that they they can amaze and inspire us all by managing not to get themselves killed in the process.
To whom it may concern, the space program has the potential to expand mankind’s knowledge and understanding of the workings of the universe. Please stop using it as a PR tool. Thank you.
Are you both joking? I have the feeling of being whooshed.
Wolfstu said “to Earth” not “from Earth”. I think he was talking about evacuating the base occupants back to Earth in an emergency.
Why bother go to Mars then? It has all the problems of the moon and it is a whole lot farther away. In all honesty, we could just keep sending robots out into space until we advanced far enough technologically to make it easy for humans to venture there, but it’s just not as exciting.
The federal Department of Education spends about 3 times NASA’s budget. I’ll bet you NASA has done more to inspire kids to get science and technology educations than the DoE ever did.
If all a moon mission did was inspire the world, show them what humans are capable of, and get kids looking back up at the moon in wonder, it would be worth it.
We need exploration. We need frontiers. We need to push our limits. We need people who can take on grand challenges, accept risk, and achieve great things.
If there’s a new space race developing, I’m all for it.
:sigh:
Well, someone has to do it.
Ahem.
“In Russia, the moon comes to you!”
“Moskali”?
From the same article:
We need a new car. Why should we have to pay for your fetishes?
Do you work for a Health and Safety Organisation ?
Whatever NASA may or may not have achieved in the past it’s the attitude that matters. That attitude lead them on the early exploration and is the same attitude that has improved society since the human race has existed.
Improved it so that you are able to choice to live a safe life and die a wrinkled old man if you so choose.
If you want to call the human desire for adventure, new information and experiences an obsession go right ahead. It’s a great obsession.
You really should learn to ignore **Liberal’s ** drive-by libertarian sloganeering. He is capable of arguing cogently and intelligently, but when he just drops by to slap a bumper sticker in someone’s thread, I don’t know why people don’t just scroll onto the next reply. In fact, when he drops by a thread to interject his politics into a discussion where they represent a hijack, we should all just scroll to the next post, whether **Liberal ** is arguing cogently or not.