US To Return To Moon ... and Beyond

Waste of resources. Unlike robots, humans in space need to sleep, to eat, to pee, and to breathe. Moreover, they get depressive and annoyed at each other when you cram them into a small space for months and years, as you would on a Mars mission. As agents of exploration, humans in space are a pointless waste of cargo capacity. The alien civilization in the movie Star Trek 1 had a point when it categorized them as "carbon pollution" of the beautiful "Enterprise" and took steps to clean the ship up. NASA has been putting people up there just to show that they can. Having shown that they can, what's the point of them showing it again?

Hiya Thomas. You're one of the people I had in mind. (Professionals in the field who think manned space flight is silly.)

The more Yanks removed from planet earth the better.

Hi Happy new year!

As another thought, consider sermons like "We owe it to the good men and women on Columbia to keep Shuttle flights going!". Then contrast this with "Jesus died for you on that cross, and this is how you thank him!" In religion as in manned spaceflight, martyrs are a handy way of shaming skeptics so they don't ask too many questions.

There will never be a time when there is enough money.

There will never be a time when there are not other things that are priorities.

Go for the stars.

About the only thing I agree with some of you folks is that I, too, do not want to see George Bush carry out this initiative...

...because I want him the hell out of that Oval Office.


GO FOR THE STARS!

I agree with frank and timberlandko that manned exploration is a coming necessity. I believe eventually there will be a real move to build settlements on some of those far places.

Campaign stunt. I would love to see manned exploration resume (begin?), but at this point in time it is unreasonable. We don't even have a functioning space shuttle, we can't afford the space station, and a significant percentage of the American public believes the craters on the moon were caused by the angels throwing rocks at each other during the "war in heaven." This is not the time, and we are not the nation to do this.

edgar, even if that is the premise -- that we need to prepare for manned space exploration -- do you think that a trip to the moon is the most efficient way to do so?

I am no scientist. But, a station on the moon would be lasting, unlike space stations.

I'm no scientist, either. I happen to know a lot of 'em, though, and it's on their input that I've formed the opinion that this is silly and misguided. Ah well.

Experts, like the Bible, can be quoted to support any position, I think. Given the proper will, either approach can succeed I would expect. At any rate, I really don't think the government is ready to spend enough cash on it.

I think iit clearly demonstrated that humankind has become what it is precisely because humankind never remains put; it explores and expands. That's pretty much what history has been teaching us since cave paintings were cutting edge technology. The only way to make amazing discoveries is to take amazing voyages. What is expected at the outset of such journies rarely is realized. What, beyond curiosity, could bring neolithics to cross the Berring Landbridge and people a theretofore undiscovered continent, or their inter-glatial ancestors to press outward from Africa? Exploring seems to be the avenue most beneficial to the species over the past 100,000 years or so. History pretty much insists we "Go for the stars". There are amazing, unforeseen, wonderful things just over the horizon. There always have been. That's why we go take a look, I figure, and I figure if ever we quit looking we we cease being human.

Okay, since no one else has said this yet...
"To the moon, Alice!"

Well, if ya wanna go there, hbob, ya gotta consider "And awaaaay we go!"

I used to have a verrrrrryyyy strong desire to be an astronaut. That was one reason I did a BS in molecular bio. That is not how things turned out, unfortunately.
Timber, re: humanity not staying put, does it not seem that we are working quite hard to "stay put?" I am speaking mostly about the assault on research led by the fundies (ideologically) and the far right (funding).

A funny thing happened on the way to the moon...
http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html
I'm certainly no scientist either; but I remember reading about a Tokamak Reactor with Lithium walls that theoretically could run on Helium3 (which the moon is supposed to be full of from Solar winds) and power the world for centuries. If science is getting close to this being a real possibility, I think it's prudent to get some fuel for the thing. If memory serves, there isn't much Helium3 on our rock because the atmosphere burns it up before it gets here. That leaves the moon for this supposedly perfect fuel. And I for one would like to see a man walk on the moon.

Return to the moon? At the risk of upsetting alot of people, I'm not convinced that it was done in the first place.

This should be fun!

Check out my link right above your post Wilso... If you have a highspeed connection; you are going to love it.

Edgar, I sympathize with this sentiment. In forming your own opinion, you may find it helpful to go to a library and browse the 1969-73 issues of scientific magazines like "Science" and "Nature". You will find that for all the hype around these missions, their scientific output was almost nil. Richard Feynman, one of my and Sozobe's heroes, discusses this observation in his piece on the Challenger catastrophe, published in his book "What do you care what other people think?"

But Feynman is an expert, so remember to keep him at arm's length.

The part that convinced me was a film of the "dune buggy" they had. When they speeded up the film, the dust kicked up by the wheels, instead of floating like it would in 1/6th gravity, fell straight back down the same way it would on a beach on earth.