We only went to get one over on the Soviets, no real incentive now...

why would they?

Pics or GTFO

You go once to explore. You go again to make a profit. Would our current culture allow mining the moon? What other benefits could be gotten from having a presence on the moon?

China will probably be going in about 20 years. Don't hold your breath but it's fairly likely if you ask me.

Anyway your "why" question once again could be of two types:

Are you asking "what is the explanation for what has prevented people from continuing to visit the moon?"

Or are you asking "how can we justify never having gone back to the moon?"

To the first, funding, an anti-scientific public, the victory in the political space race, etc., you know the drill.

To the second, there are plenty of people who think it's kind of an embarrassment that our most impressive technological feat is more than 50 years behind us. There are others, usually anti-science types, who think there is no good reason to go at all, so they would say that we should probably never have gone and "wasted" our money to get there in the first place.

It's a tired debate, but in modern times the non-Luddites always have the last laugh so I wouldn't trouble yourself.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/391276_456610591026624_274620791_n.jpg

What would doing something we've already accomplished prove? Nothing.

What we should be doing is working on getting people to Mars, not rehashing the glory days of the space race.

According the Newt Gingrich NASA has become a bureaucratic nightmare, with the reforms he proposed NASA would become innovative enough to build a moon colony by 2020.

I will agree that NASA is a bureaucratic mess.

but I don't think anyone agrees with him that you could get a moon colony in 8 years

I don't see why you couldn't. The technology to ship the equipment up there exists, and the equipment itself is hardly new. The only thing stopping us is the expense and the fundamental pointlessness of the idea.

Technically, I'm sure it's feasible. It's just an issue of policy and money.

I know previous biodome tests have failed though...

I think even space-fans give NASA more shit than they deserve. They get a lot done, despite multitudinous external constraints. That's another conversation though.

And yeah building a damn base in so few years could obviously be done if money was no object. You could easy drop half a tril on it lol.

It's really quite surprising that the one thing that Obama doesn't want to spend oodles and oodles of money on is the space program.

Why haven't we gone back? Probably a combination of lack of will, lack of obvious benefit, fear of our success opening the door for other countries to leapfrog us by learning our mistakes, and a general lack of imagination.

You won't find a bigger fan of a more aggressive exploration of space than me, but I think we as a species are a long way off from a resumption of manned missions. Of the six space agencies with the ability to do such a thing (America, Russia, China, India, Japan, and Europe) all but India have looming demographic nightmares when it comes to paying out entitlements and all but India and America will have fewer workers to pay for those benefits owed to old people. Grandma will get her oxygen before any astronaut does.

I seriously doubt half a trillion would be enough if you want to build a colony on the moon in 7 years.

It depends how ambitious you want to be. At its most basic a Moon colony is a space station on legs, which we've been able to make for decades. It certainly won't be anywhere you can live for a long time, though. The low gravity puts pay to that.

Really tho Invictus.. you're going to try to bring in 'entitlements'? Lol. The two are barely connected.

It's not as though these states can't actually pay for their social benefit programs, it's that lots of people don't think they should. And the space budget is so minor in comparison that it's a moot point anyway.

This is just like the foreign aid argument. It's frankly ridiculous to start talking about big-ticket budget issues in the context, because these items are so minor comparatively.

You could double NASA's budget and get it all from defense and people would scarcely notice unless someone decided to create an artificial stink over it. Same goes for foreign aid.

You really don't think half a trillion would cut it? I mean I admit I pulled that out of my ass but it looks like in todays dollars launching one Saturn V would cost about $2 billion, let's kick it up to $5 just assuming things would cost more for some reason.

So you can already pay for 50 payloads to go to the moon and still use the other $250 billion to actually work on the stuff for the base itself.

Doesn't sound that bad. If I remember right it's estimated that we could build the motherfucking Great Pyramid for 0.1% of that price.

Anyway this is ridiculous because half a trillion would be like 3% of all total federal income in the same time period.. hell of a lot more than we spend now.

"Colonizing" the moon is actually trivial. Just crash the ISS into the moon and send them care packages occasionally.

It really depends on what you actually want to accomplish.

What does it matter. After the fiscal cliff America will never do anything great again anyway. Lol.

50%jk

What are typically the reasons for colonizing the Moon? Mining and as a gateway to other planets, right?

They are totally related, since they're government spending. States are going to have a hard time meeting their obligations with entitlement programs and also paying for education and infrastructure, let alone space exploration. There are going to be more old people than ever before all over the world and the current system is not set up to handle both taking care of them and doing a lot of the other things that we expect government to do.

When the tough decisions have to be made all over the world the obvious place to cut is stuff with no obvious immediate benefit or return, like space exploration and the arts. I hope I'm wrong, but it will always be easier to cut NASA and other space agencies' budgets (even though the savings are merely symbolic on the grand scheme of things) than it is to reform entitlements.

What's the big deal about the fiscal cliff, by the way? In a month or so taxes for everyone go up a silly amount automaticly. Then Obama says "I'm going to lower taxes for everyone but the super rich" and the Republicans can either agree or be the bastards who keep taxes high (which is so anti-Republican it will never happen). Obama gets ecactly what he wants without even trying.

Not even Obama can bugger this up, surely?

But no, there is nothing to achieve on the Moon unless someone finds something it'd be cost effective to mine.

Also just sort of proof of concept of extra-terrestrial colonization. You wouldn't have to deal with the problems of... you know, never having been the place you're trying to colonize I guess lol.

Also, long-term we're going to want a moon base anyway, so the time is ripe to start working on how to make one as self-sufficient as we can.

And yes there are mining potentialities I think.

From a geostrategic point of view, it's in the best interest of a country to get a colony down on the Moon as soon as they can because it would force the issue of extra-terrestrial colonization in international law, because there are currently a range of disputes about the legal status of lunar soil. Going ahead with building a base could long term be a pretty beneficial case for an eventual claim or stake to at least part of the place.

"They are totally related, since they're government spending. States are going to have a hard time meeting their obligations with entitlement programs and also paying for education and infrastructure, let alone space exploration. "

Education, infrastructure, sure. Those are huge inside the already limited sphere of discretionary spending.

Space exploration and other small time issues like that? It's like telling a crack addict who's deep in debt that he needs to start getting small instead of large drinks when he goes out to save cash. It's ridiculous. It might technically contribute, but it's so far outside the point that it borders on misleading.

I might read up more on this, but I find it hard to believe it would be worth shipping anything back from the moon. I think mining would be more useful to actually sustain the colony or ships passing through.

Lastly, space exploration is essentially R&D funding.

Anyone who suggests cutting government R&D funding*at all* doesn't have their priorities straight. You think we have budget problems now? Wait till we have all the same debts, but no innovative economy to keep paying them with. Fast track to the third world.