I never understand the assertation that somehow NASA is this huge waste of resources that would be better spent elsewhere, when:
[ul]
[li]The relative monies involved are that that enormous,[/li][li]tangential technological benefits are legion, and[/li][li]the same could be said of countless other government projects and organizations, yet we don’t constantly debate them here.[/li][/ul]
He’s not entitled to voice his opinion on the way tax dollars should be spent?
Actually considering we are not living in a total Malthus nightmare world and have been continually working on ways to increase the planets food supply I’d say we have thank you very much. The new farming techniques and introduction of GM Foods seem to indicate that we didn’t fold up shop on working out that problem in favour of moon shots.
True, but them’s the risks. Exploration has always had potentional for failure… (Roenoke anyone?) and yet in the end the long reaching benifits can overshadow the temporary failures.
Damn if the English packed it in after the colony disapeared You might not be here bitching about the personal cost to you, Mr selfish pants… (Please won’t somebody think about the children’s, children’s children… 
)
Interestingly enough I sort of already do… See Seperate School boards, Ontario Education, and taxes…
While not a big fan, I don’t begrudge that sometimes my tax money goes places that don’t benifit me directly all the time, because as I see it one of those kids might end up my doctor, lawyer or just the guy at the Best buy who actually knows something about computers.
There’s an enormous chasm between what I said and what you’re implying I said. Only way to jump across is if you’re in a reduced gravity environment. Like the moon.
The Moon and Mars are but stepping stones to the stars. Let us get there sooner rather than later.
There is no way I could say it better than the master himself said it:
I personally think it would be more in keeping with the ethos of that Heinlein quote to first do what we can to preserve the terraforming of Earth, which can be a good habitat for quite awhile yet if we invest the proper effort.
But to paraphrase Friedman, the next twenty years will be crucial. The Moon and Mars, and the stars far beyond them, will still be there after we save our own planet from anthropogenic climate change.
I don’t know what it takes to inspire children, but if I were to have a child at my relatively advanced age, I know which question from his future grownup self I’d rather not have to answer, if the choice is between “Why didn’t your generation take us to Mars?” and “Why didn’t your generation do something about global warming, while the chance was there?”
i doubt all these countries are in for it for altruistic reasons. it is a race after all. but what do the winner win? power? money? fame? (in this lifetime)
I’m not sure about that whole survival of the race thing. Former president Clinton has said that the coming generation of Americans could be the first in history to have a shorter lifespan that its parents. Maybe the race will die before it can leap out of its own sewage.
Wars are fought for no reason other than profit. Whole families die for no reason other than poverty. The earth itself is becoming an enemy of man. The notion that this creature could (or even would) pursue the goal of making life better for its fellow creatures is almost laughable in its naivite.
In the absurdly unlikely event that there will ever be any sort of significant space travel or colonization, what will happen is the very opposite of what the innocents expect. Social Darwinists may use it to seed a master race. Politicians and businessmen in partnership may use it to mine material resources. Religious fanatics may use it to bring about the will of gods. But ordinary people will still be poor. They’ll still die. The race may survive, but it will still be spawning oppression and hopelessness. Just like always.
Big woop.
The next president should create a Secretary of Coolness, who will watch Star Trek every day and think up ways to spend lots of money on things the human race doesn’t really need. It will be cool.
Who is “we?” The US? Russian? China? Iran? Canada? The UK? Australia?
You think we should all just have a big group hug and start terraforming Earth?
I don’t see that happening, and I think the idea of proving we can terraform Earth before wasting dollars on space is the same tired old argument fuddy-duddies have been using for decades. “Lets feed the poor first!”
Yeah, that worked out.
You’d propose we put all our eggs in one basket and hope for the best, then?
So let’s go to Mars anyway. 
Irrelevant. Taxation != slavery. As you know.
Social Darwinism, as I understand it, has nothing to do with that. It just means no gubmint handouts – “Root, hog, or die!” Eugenics, in a way, but of a purely passive form. And a theory sometimes cited (more often, hinted at) as an argument for Libertarian social policies.
Exactly.
If it’s your point of view that humans are naturally greedy, self-absorbed, short-sighted, brutish, and miserable, then we can be greedy, self-absorbed, short-sighted, brutish, and miserable here on Earth, for ever and ever; or we can be ourselves in many places across the cosmos. I vote the latter.
When I look at the ‘improper’ functions of government, the worst things are when government simply redistributes wealth, taxing from some and giving to others. I’m not talking about taking from the rich and giving to the poor, but taxing the middle class and then giving money back to the middle class in the form of benefits or tax credits. That’s direct manipulation of people’s lives. Then comes direct interference in the economy in the form of industrial policy - trying to manage the economy in a way that’s supposedly ‘better’ than the market. Then comes various income redistribution schemes, regulations to protect us from ourselves, and other burdensome government interventions in our lives.
On the ‘good government’ side of the ledger, I see the police, the military, the courts, and regulations intended to correct honest market failures and ensure the smooth functioning of financial markets.
Not far from that group of activities is government funding of basic research and science that is not practical for private industry to undertake. This is controversial among libertarians, but if governments don’t build superconducting supercolliders, space telescopes, and other expensive research programs that have no immediate commercial benefit, no one will. Manned space exploration falls in that category. Among the things NASA does, the ones I want them to stop doing are the things that basically move from exploration to exploitation - commercial satellite launch, etc. The Shuttle has crowded out much private investment in space launch for heavy lift.
So as a Libertarian, I want the market to work where it can, and NASA to do what the market can’t or won’t. So get NASA out of the space truck business, get them out of satellite repair jobs, and let NASA focus on long-term research and get back to exploration. They should hire out as much of the work as possible to private contractors, and do it in a more capitalist fashion - for example through prizes or payments for hitting fixed milestones, leaving the design and implementation up to the market. (as opposed to the current practice of picking on huge contractor, then feeding them a detailed design and basically paying them whether or not it ever flies). NASA can put out open tenders for cargo-to-LEO, for moon landers, space suits, and the other hardware it needs, and pay on delivery. Then it can spend its time developing missions, training astronauts, and managing it all.
Finally, NASA is a trivial part of the U.S. budget. I fnd it bizarre that people argue until they are blue in the face about giving NASA a billion or two more, when other agencies quietly have tens of billions shuffled to them with no one knowing or caring. If you want to pick an ideological fight over the proper function of government, NASA is a lousy place to stand your ground. It’s probably provided more value per dollar spent than any other government agency, and unlike many others, it doesn’t tend to restrict people’s freedoms or become intrusive in the average lives of the citizenry.
I wish I had your optimism in a glorious Libertarian future. Frankly, I see things going the other way. I see a future of increasing sameness, of omnipresent government, and of people turning their focus inwards and retreating into stagnation. I’m not optimistic about the future any more.
I’m sorry - what has proved impossible by simple math?
As for your continued pleas for the world’s poor… Do you really think you can solve poverty by throwing money at it? Do you think people in Africa starve because there hasn’t been enough foreign aid? You of all people should know that chronic poverty isn’t because of lack of aid, but because of a lack of political and economic freedom. Take NASA’s money and give it to Africa, and you’ll enrich a few warlords who will use it to consolidate their power and kill their enemies. That’s what they do with aid money today. Aid money to Africa is probably counterproductive because it helps sustain otherwise unsustainable despotic regimes, and creates a culture of dependency which displaces the need to learn to be competitive.
Wow. I’m not sure what you mean when you say, “The courage and means to resist you”, but it sounds rather ominous. You need to relax and step back. I used to be a militant libertarian purist, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that you’ve got to pick your battles. Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good. Work the margins. I support NASA because I think that government money is being spent whether NASA gets it or not, and I’d rather see it spent on moon rockets than on building yet another intrusive bureaucracy or creating another category of entitlements that are ‘owed’ to the people. Your way may be purer, but my way is more likely to actually move the world in a libertarian direction. You’re tilting at windmills.
interesting. though i remember reading something (long ago) about the U.S. plans to build an giant orbital nail gun in space, so that does not fully explain the need for a manned moon base. i also can’t picture japan building any sort of weapon in space without uncle sam going all puffy like.
Yes. Yes we could.
I’m not nearly as hostile as Lib towards the idea of space exploration and colonization as a future goal for mankind, but the current means of propulsion and life support that would get us to Mars and the Moon have virtually nothing to do with the technology that may eventually carry us to other, useful planets. Sending manned missions to local rocks in the near future isn’t a step toward anything we want to be a part of – rather, it’s an expensive dead-end.
That’s unfortunate, since space travel is undeniably cool and, for some, inspiring. But it’s also a propogandist flight of fancy in its current form. Maybe it’s just me (really), but I think efficient use of resources can also be inspiring.
Actually, this is actually pretty much how it works at ESA, partly because the small member states didn’t want a big international eurocracy to develop. Even a lot of the people who work in ESA facilities as ESA staff – engineers, scientists, etc. – are in fact contractors. And nearly all the design work for soon-to-launch projects with relatively mature technology happen at contractors in the member states.
We have been starting to get some of this “one big contractor” thing a bit lately, partly because of the consolidation that’s been going on in the industry.
Anyway, if the taxpayers of Luxembourg don’t want a few millions of their euros going to pay for ExoMars, they can vote for a government that will pull out of ESA. Or they can have a revolution and create some new kind of society alternative to tax-and-government nation-states. But this isn’t a thread about the possible evils of the current paradigm for organizing human societies on the sub-continental scale. It’s a thread about moon bases.
On another note, in case there was confusion on the first page of the thread: I meant to say that it’s relatively easy to evacuate the crew of a Moon base to Earth (compared to a Mars base), not to say that the Moon will act as a refugee camp for disaster-struck earthlings.