Should We Go To The Moon?
Recently, Obama cut a proposed manned mission to the moon from the budget, much to the dismay of the space community who has been trying to go back for years, hopefully as a springboard for a manned mission to Mars. Now as much of a space fan as I am, I have ot say that Obama was absolutely right in his decision, for several reasons.
First and most obviously, we can’t afford it. We’re borrowing money like there’s no tomorrow as it is, we just don’t have the available cash to throw billions into space exploration right now, that money is more valuable here at home.
Secondly though, I don’t think planting flags is a particularly good use of our space exploration dollar and that’s really all any of this entails. Why are we going to the moon? Is it to set up a permanent colony? Is it to mine moon ore? Is it to do anything but stand around, stick flags in the ground and collect moon rocks? Nope, that’s really all anyone wants to do. That’s been the entirety of NASA manned missions to date, it’s a photo-op and a big dick-waving contest to show that we can do it, even if we have no clue what it’s actually good for.
Until NASA actually comes up with a plan that makes going to the moon or to Mars a financially viable and rewarding expedition, we shouldn’t go. Give us a reason to go there beyond being able to. The American pioneering spirit is alive and well, but even in the early days of America, most people didn’t go into the wilderness just because it was there, but because they hoped to make a ton of money doing it. It’s great that you want to go out there, but we, the taxpayer, are footing the bill, what do we get out of it? Personally, I want a return on my investment.
Maybe instead of going to the moon or Mars, we ought to go out to one of the large local asteroids and mine it. They contain tons upon tons of precious and valuable metal ores, likely more in a single large asteroid than we’ve mined on Earth in the entire history of mankind. Add to that the fact that, without a significant gravity field like a planet or moon, getting on and off an asteroid is much easier and more fuel-efficient. I’d even say that building lunar refineries for processing the raw ore, after a time when we’ve made enough money to make it worthwhile, might be something we can do, at least we’ll be using our exploration dollars for something that is going to pay us back over time. Just going, for the sake of going, is meaningless.
If NASA wants to do something with it’s time, maybe it should spend more time figuring a better way to get into orbit. Right now, that’s the majority of the cost of every launch. Until we can do it cheaply and reliably and do better than mounting our spacecraft on a giant bomb, going off to explore other worlds is a meaningless, pointless gesture. Let’s take baby steps before we sprint and the first step means getting off this rock in the most efficient manner possible.
Of course, wait until we have the money to do it, which judging by the world economic problems, may be quite a long ways off. Exploration is something you do when times are good, not when people are having problems getting enough to eat. Until then, we have no business putting one more person into orbit, much less on another planet.
No Comments Yet to “Should We Go To The Moon?”
Bitchscriptions
Revolt Basic theme by NenadK. | Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS).