Is It Time To Return To The Moon?

[Mr Natural]

Going to the moon was the last great thing this country did.

 

[American Horse]

" - India, Russia, China, Japan, and the European Space Agency, for starters, all want a manned mission to the Moon and it won’t stop there. These countries and agencies know that manned space exploration builds wealth for their nation, solves problems and enhances life for their people right here on Earth, and shows us the way for how we can all live together in peace.

Manned space exploration is absolutely worth the investment. It’s not just about what we learn out there in space, or about ourselves, or how to be a better steward of precious Earth. It’s about how we live here on Earth together and what type of future we want for ourselves and children.

Manned space exploration is the path to how we build a better life for ourselves here on Earth, and how we can give hope and provide inspiration for our youngsters to grow up, do the schoolwork, and accept the challenges that await them to make our world even better. Whatever we spend on manned space exploration is a bargain and our investment will be returned to us many times over, both quantitatively and qualitatively. From my perspective, we are getting this value at a bargain, as if we were all going to the dollar store for an end of the year sale - "

The Space Review: Is space exploration worth the cost?

Is this a social experiment or a business ?

Because of the scale of the endeavor governments are involved, so the social value has to enter into the equation. It's encouraging, in a case like this (with government involvement) that there is social value and lives can be shown to be improved everywhere, not just where the action, the physical plant, and the educational resources reside. America has been the greatest beneficiary up to now; it's hard to image our lives had we not initiated access to space beyond the military competition with the old Soviet Union.

Space exploration has the potential of being the largest driver of science, productivity, standard of living, and human well-being than anything else since Gutenberg's press.

 

[rightwinger]

" - India, Russia, China, Japan, and the European Space Agency, for starters, all want a manned mission to the Moon and it won’t stop there. These countries and agencies know that manned space exploration builds wealth for their nation, solves problems and enhances life for their people right here on Earth, and shows us the way for how we can all live together in peace.

Manned space exploration is absolutely worth the investment. It’s not just about what we learn out there in space, or about ourselves, or how to be a better steward of precious Earth. It’s about how we live here on Earth together and what type of future we want for ourselves and children.

Manned space exploration is the path to how we build a better life for ourselves here on Earth, and how we can give hope and provide inspiration for our youngsters to grow up, do the schoolwork, and accept the challenges that await them to make our world even better. Whatever we spend on manned space exploration is a bargain and our investment will be returned to us many times over, both quantitatively and qualitatively. From my perspective, we are getting this value at a bargain, as if we were all going to the dollar store for an end of the year sale - "

The Space Review: Is space exploration worth the cost?

Is this a social experiment or a business ?

Because of the scale of the endeavor governments are involved, so the social value has to enter into the equation. It's encouraging, in a case like this (with government involvement) that there is social value and lives can be shown to be improved everywhere, not just where the action, the physical plant, and the educational resources reside. America has been the greatest beneficiary up to now; it's hard to image our lives had we not initiated access to space beyond the military competition with the old Soviet Union.

Space exploration has the potential of being the largest driver of science, productivity, standard of living, and human well-being than anything else since Gutenberg's press.

Again we get the Tang and Velcro argument

There is no doubt that space research generates other technology advances. But putting those same research dollars into energy research, medical researcher, agricultural research, transportation research would lead directly to advances in those fields and would also lead to technological offshoots

Space Research needs to meet the same standards that any other research meets. Namely, what are the direct benefits of the research vs cost

 

[rightwinger]

The largest benefit of our space program to date has been political and prestige.

We got to the moon first and you didn't.

Nobody can take that away. But repeating our trips to the moon or to Mars does not have the same political or social clout that the Cold War landings had.

So now, space exploration has to meet an economic standard. What is the bang for the buck?

 

[Old Rocks]

The devices that we are debating this with are a result of the space program. Without the demands for the computing power that endevour demanded, we would not be where we are today concerning computers and networks.

 

[rightwinger]

The devices that we are debating this with are a result of the space program. Without the demands for the computing power that endevour demanded, we would not be where we are today concerning computers and networks.

There was much R&D on computers that was done outside of NASA. It is hard to say where we would be without NASA computers. Where would we be if we had invested directly into computer and microprocessor R&D?