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The Case for the Moon
apsmith writes "Continuing the flurry of recent hearings on the future of humans in space, a Senate committee on Thursday heard testimony in favor of a return to the Moon. Former senator and moon-walker Harrison Schmitt and physicist David Criswell see the lunar surface as an immense energy resource, just waiting to be tapped. Astronomer Roger Angel sees the lunar south pole as the ideal astronomical observatory, with locations for telescopes 100 times better than anything we've done so far. And geologist Paul Spudis sees a lot of unfinished business on the Moon, to develop it as the "feedstock of an industrial space infrastructure." TransOrbital also sent written testimony."
Why not? Competition is a good thing - competing with the USSR helped the US get to the moon in less than a decade. Competition from Craig Venter/Celera pushed the NIH to finish sequencing the human genome in half the projected time.
Without competition, the government will just lumber along, chewing up money and then maybe or maybe not get to a useful endpoint. External competition helps government agencies become much more goal-oriented.
"The Case for Mars", which makes the arguement that we should ignore the moon and instead head on out to the fourth planet.
His arguements:
1) In terms of energy, it's easier to go to Mars from LEO than the moon. (Takes longer, though.)
2) Mars is a more interesting destination: because it has an atmosphere, a lot of engineering obstacles are solved because you can do all sorts of nifty engineering tricks to steal resources from the air.
3) The moon is dead, and has always been dead. Mars, on the other hand, perhaps even once supported life. With effort on our part, perhaps it could again.
Anyways, go to the Mars Direct site.
-Brett
After the final lunar landings in 1972, NASA and the nation were at a crossroads. We landed on the moon but this was partially to make sure the Russians did not do so first. With the "Great Society" in the works and Vietnam still raging, the space program was put on the back burner in favor or funding for social programs and military expenditures. Russia never went to the moon and it looks to be at least until 2010 before China might try, thus there was no political incentive to sacrifice pork projects or "social" programs in favor of expanded space projects.
Though the Space Shuttle was supposed to reduce space travel costs dramatically and allow for low-cost LEO (Low Earth Orbit) launches, the costs proved so much greater than expected that NASA spends most of its budget maintaining the aging fleet and is hard-pressed to spare the cash for developing new launch vehicles. It was thought that space stations launched via space shuttle would be used as waystations to revisit the moon, but as the shuttles cost so much to move around, that plan became bunk fairly quickly.
We must return to the moon. Its natural vacuum and near-constant illuminated surface allow for massive energy and chemical manufacturing. Deadly plagues and other research requiring isolation could be done easily on our moon with minimal fear of contaminating the earth should their projects go awry. Telescopes on the far side of the moon would give us a new view of the universe uninterrupted by light (and for SETI et. al not so many electronic signals interfereing). If nothing else, the He-3 and solar resources could eventually help reduce our dependence on limited fossil fuels to run our economy. Some of the readers remember the OPEC crisis and no one wants those conditions to return. Finally, the moon serves as a waypoint to exploration of Mars and the Asteroid Belt, both of which contain abundant resources that could satiate our world's demands for resources far beyond the lifetimes of anyone reading this.
I'd like to hear from people who do not want to go back to the moon. Most of the soical programs they advocate funding in place of space exploration have their own difficulties, but maybe there are other reasons they have which get little/no attention.
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