re: Proposed Moon Mission Offers Little Value at Astronomical Cost

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they don’t want to understand.

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Ok

Or perhaps I do understand and actually care about space exploration.

With attitudes such as this one, it's a wonder that we won any world wars, put men on the moon in 69 or had any new relevant technology advances in the last 40 years..

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Anyone who couldn't tell me who Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin is should not be reproducing.

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True story, Neil Armstrong was going to play in a celebrity golf tournament for charity, basically you donate a bunch of money to play golf with a celebrity or famous person. When Neil Armstrong went to sign in for the tournament the girl at the desk asked him what celebrity he would be playing with.

Until a cheaper method to orbit is achieved then the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. Sending a man to the moon was the pinnacle of human achievement but let’s be realistic we’ve learned far, far more about space from our unmanned missions than our manned ones. And that will continue to be the case. I think people romanticize the idea and in doing so lose site of the end goal. If learning more about the universe is the objective then unmanned by far and away makes the most sense. If feeling inspired and patriotic is what you’re after then yeah I guess we need to go back to the moon.

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Your understanding of physics is sorely lacking. It takes a lot of fuel to create the inertia to escape the Earth’s gravitational pull. By launching from the moon you avoid that extra fuel expenditure and stress on the ship. This makes travel to more distant planets infinitely more possibly.

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Launching from the moon is only a advantage if you can mine materials from the moon and build a significant portion of a launch vehicle on the moon along with making the needed fuel from lunar materials. Hauling a bunch of stuff to the moon and just assembling it there and launching is just launching the same amount of mass twice. Given the number of trips required from the earth to the moon to establish a base and manufacturing facility, it is going to be more cost effective to just assemble a spacecraft in earth orbit and take off from there.

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we’ve learned far, far more about space from our unmanned missions than our manned ones

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Probably because we were stuck in Earth orbit with the useless shuttle program for 30 years. I guarantee you one manned mission to the Martian surface would glean more than all of the previous unmanned probes to Mars....combined.

As Neil deGrasse Tyson argues, the manned space program creates heroes. This invigorating force elevates and energizes the minds of the general population.

It’s no different than the man who stands in front of a column of tanks who inspires humanists. It’s no different than the woman who becomes a symbol of freedom by going to school. It’s no different than the zoologist who reveals the splendor and the value of the animal kingdom or the climatologist who shows the delicateness of the environment – both of which can create a generation that is sensitive to the importance and fragility of our planet.

Seeing people explore, touching that innate desire embedded in all of us, it is uplifting. It elevates a generation, a culture, and the entire human species.

Is the cost and risk of manned spaceflight worth the gain? Was it worth it when people got into boats and sailed across the vast ocean? Was it worth it when a few guys decided to invent a contraption that would allow them to fly?

You had better believe it.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.



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Doesn't make sense? I don't want to live life without Velcro