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NASA Considers Plans for Permanent Moon Base
el crowbar sent us a link to an MSNBC article detailing NASA's plans for a moon base. The permanently staffed structure could begin construction sometime in 2010, with six-month duty rotations the norm by 2025. Interestingly, the space agency is looking far afield for technical expertise. Consultants on the project include individuals from Caterpillar, Norcat, Boeing, and other manufacturing concerns. Right now the only detail for placement and purpose is 'on the rim of a crater near one of the poles', but the article outlines a few other ideas that enterprising individuals have in mind for a moon base. Besides helium-3 mining and lunar hotels, do you have any good ideas for a moon base startup?
Naturally, a basketball court for all us white folk...
And I'm assuming plans for a giant "laser" have already been considered.
Ridiculous. How are the sharks supposed to swim up to the moon just so we can get big frickin lasers up there? On the backs of the mutated sea bass?
A lunapark and casino with hookers and blackjack... Ah, forget about the blackjack.
Let's see...
Moon Base (for the sci-fi fans)
Resort Hotel (most likely modeled in the Las Vegas "style")
Commercial trips to the moon (perfect for advertising agencies to plaster their wares on)
Strip Mining (for the republicans)
Yeah, you can tell the American touch has been put on these plans (Note, I am American). Any chance we can put some government offices, maybe a DMV or something?
Disclaimer: This is written as sarcastic dry comedy, not hateful/spiteful/snotty
- Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
From TFA:
I think we should start by getting a few moon facts straight before we progress to a permenant settlement:
So if it was going to lose line of sight occasionally it would be on every lunar orbit, not every year. The lunar axis of rotation is so close to the orbital plane around the Earth that a polar station will never see the Earth move significantly in its sky.
If anybody is interested my preference would be for a heavy, pressurised rover. Capable of autonomous driving and control from the ground. Each new crew lands close to the path of the rover and drives it for a week or so. They then meet up with another lander and use its ascent stage to return to Earth. Some ascent stages are landed under remote control so that the first crew can use one to return.
The problem with a fixed base is that the local area will get boring pretty quickly, so a pressurised rover will be needed in any event. If the rover only drives at 10km/h the whole habitat may just as well be on the rover. It can drive fast enough to always be in sunlight, so you don't have to worry about energy storage at night.
Ascent stages are flown down under automatic control, or left behhttp://michaelsmith.id.au
Yeah, spacesuit on spacesuit action, that's hot. How do we get the grits in there?
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
They need an amusement park. We're whalers on the Moon, we carry a harpoon...
Hey, guys. Big gulps, huh? Cool. All right! Well, see ya later.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
It's a pain manufacturing a vacuum; the moon has a lot of it laying around, making it a great place to make things that require one.
How about.... a solar forge, melting down local ore, bubbling a gas through it (lower gravity means more spherical bubbles, better strength) to make foam alloy structural elements, then putting it on your solar powered catapult to shoot into orbit for either a) recovery for earth use via semi-controlled re-entry or b) orbital construction.
Low gravity ceramic compounds would be interesting also.
um... a joke has to be thrown in...
great place for a remake of Sapce:1999?
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Probably not very feasible, but why not have a base built underground, where the temperature could be stabilized year-round?
- Aetheral Research -
Inquiring minds want to know.
Normally something like building a base on the moon would seem like a cool idea. But in today's world of politics and jockeying for money, this will never see the light of day. Projects over 4 years are guaranteed to get the boot at some point down the road for either political reasons or just flat out budget issues.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
More likely a lunar detainment and "rendition" centre far from snooping eyes and pesky UN rules and human rights lawyers.
Just existing up there requires a Ph. D. in Not Fucking Up the Hab.
And for what? He-3? Try again.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
Guantanamo crater perhaps?
Wot, no Halliburton?
AT&ROFLMAO
Forget 6 month rotations. Ask for volunteers to make the moon their permanent home. They would need larger sturdy buildings but the goal should be to build enough infrastructure so that mining and refineries can eventually build additional infrastructure completely from resources on the moon itself. In the long run I imagine that this would be much more economical than trying to maintain an aging space station. I would def be looking to sign up to be a lunar pioneer. Sure it would be hard but nothing worthwhile comes easy. The 3 main resources that would be in short supply would be oxygen, water, and food. But with water and seed food could be grown.. maybe even enough plant life to produce a renewable supply of oxygen and food. Leaving only water, I guess that's why NASA is so bent on looking for that stuff!
Electricity could be provided from solar power, since you would have areas that always receive direct sunlight. At first a large scale Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator could provide more than enough power.
I may be a pessimist but it's my belief that the key to long term human survival (as a species) requires that we find a way to get off this rock and not just for 6 months but indefinitely. The moon seems like a very good start. Once we learn how to survive there the prospect of permanent colonization of an actual planet, like Mars, would be cake.
Nick Powers
Computer Science Masters student Texas A&M U
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Don't worry, they'll come in later and build the schools and hospitals for the native moon people.
That's what they want you to think...
"n different words, the US government is taking away most of the money flowing to scientifically valuable projects and instead handing it out to big corporations with no experience."
No experience in what? Building moon bases? Who has that kind of experience? Building equipment to build moonbases? I think Boeing and Caterpillar might be good bets as Boeing is a space contractor and Caterpillar is manufacturer of construction equipment.
Tell us, who would you recommend to build a moon base? Or are you suggesting we don't build a moonbase? In which case, what do you suggest we do instead?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Watch out for Ignignokt, he might flip you the bird real hard then explode... or maybe just light up like a toy. *shrug*
Up, make it self-sustainable, self-expanding and self-developing through utilising the resources available on the moon, aiming to import as little as possible from the mother nest. I say we should aim for a colony, not a base.
Well the Indians are planning on making a moon trip... maybe everyone'll work together on the moon base.
_Vishal www.squad9.com
Besides helium-3 mining and lunar hotels, do you have any good ideas for a moon base startup?
/. submission summary:
2 -climatechange_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA
This is possibly the most small-minded query ever seen on a
[assume best Jeff Spicoli persona] Like, Mr. Hand, do you have any good ideas for a moon base startup? [giggles nervously]
Opinions on the submission summary aside, the big question for me is: To what extent will Americans (I'm not) expect this venture to be self-funding? A research component (pursuit of pure knowledge stuff) in NASA's budget will, I expect, only get you part-way.
If helium-3 is present to the extent indicated by the lunar soil samples brought back by Apollo 11 and subsequent missions, then the economics of a lunar mining operations might even work - if we can find something to do with a big swack of helium-3, other than filling kid's birthday balloons. Maybe there's someone out there who is an authority on this: to what extent does using helium-3 as fuel for fusion reduce the by-product/radioactive waste produced by nuclear reactors? Is helium-3 at reasonable cost a Big Win for the nuclear industry?
The time is certainly ripe for getting serious about getting out of the fossil-fuel business (not from an economic perspective, where Exxon's $40 Billion USD profit last year looks Pretty Good, but from a How Long Can This Go On? perspective).
I'm reading this the day after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued their report, which says things don't look good, to say the least:
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2007-02-0
So the economic appeal may be there.
Six month rotations are mentioned. I'm not an out-doors guy, but I'll tell you that the prospect of spending 175+ straight days in-doors isn't too appealing to me. Maybe this is why Huxley envisaged Happy Drugs; this would be the ultimate test of our ability to medicate ourselves to contentment in the face of adversity in our environment. I'm wondering what the rotation cycles are for remote assignments on Earth, e.g. Antarctic and Arctic exploration stations? While functionally the Antarctic Winter and the Lunar environment have the same effect - no going outside except in serious gear, or you die - I think that there is a psychological oppression that goes along with being on the moon. Comments?
I think that six month rotations would take quite a while to build up to.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
The differences are, indeed, subtle, but after the fourth repeat on ITV4 you can start to discern them.
I've recently arrived at the conclusion that the occupants of Moonbase Alpha were, in fact, the useless crap from Earth that nobody wanted to deal with. They were "tricked" into taking postings on the moon where someone deliberately set them up the bomb. Let's recall who we're dealing with here:
The only good things about Space 1999 are the sets and special effects (I don't care what anyone says, Supermarionation was bitching) and the theme music (only ever out-funked by that of U.F.O., another Gerry Anderson great).
As incredible as it may sound, an orbital station is a lot worse an environment than the Moon.
Low gravity instead of no gravity: all sorts of things get more complicated in zero-G. Cooling is a nice example - you have to force circulation of fluids because convection does not exist. Fluids in pipes (plumbing in general) are also much better behaved in any gravity than in zero-G. You could have a decent shower in a moonbase, although I would not recommend a swimming pool due to the risk of drowning - it's harder to swim in low-G and the waves are higher.
No need to boost the orbit every now and then: The station has a low orbit that keeps decaying and needs to be boosted from time to time. A moonbase would have no such need.
Possibility of tapping local raw materials: There must be something we can use to build things there. Once we get started, it may even become self-sustaining
The moon as a heat-sink: One of the problems of the space station is how to dissipate heat. On the Moon you can use thermal conduction to get rid of the excess. A space-borne nuclear reactor is a bitch to build, but a land-based one (here or there) is not.
Just a little bit of atmosphere: IIRC, the Moon has a very tenuous atmosphere that blocks most micrometeorites - that's why the ISS orbit is so low (that and because the shuttle can't go higher) - but not enough to annoy deep space observations. Imagine a Hubble that, when something breaks, can be fixed by someone who lives next to it.
True: Moon-dust (extremely abrasive, sticky, toxic - what else could you wish?) is something we must learn to work with. Also, landing on the Moon requires a lot of energy, but once we have enough local manufacturing and energy-generation capacity, we can launch stuff back to LEO (or straight to the surface) very easily.
And, something to be remembered, such a launch capability could easily be weaponized. Imagine a 100-ton lump of metal falling on your "axis-of-evil" city at Mach 20.
If that doesn't make Bush and Co. sign the check, nothing else will.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Obviously the export of the moon would be solar power converted to microwave and beamed to recievers orbiting earth. Wasn't it Heinlen who suggested that tunnels be dug and farms created heated by the raw solar energy from above? If h2o is anywhere near the the polar caps then ice mining?
The solution is to make any intellectual property created for this endeavor public domain when the effort fails. That way there will be plenty of encouragement to participate only if the companies think they will succeed. If they succeed then they profit off their IP monopolies. And if they fail then the public will have received something for their tax dollars and the companies may still have an edge over their competition -- just not a long-lived one.
Finally, IP would have a use other than screwing non-lawyers.
Wars and space exploration, together with outsourcing and privatization, are a great pretext for corporate welfare and pork.
That's harsh. Apparently corruption managed to land us on the moon, send dozens of probes out into the solar system, and built an International Space Station complete with the capability to take routine space trips every 4 months. If NASA did all of what it has done while being nothing more than a tool for corporations to steal government money, then shit, sign me up to be a congressional lobbyist- I might cure world hunger.
I'd prefer to see the space program killed altogether and NASA disbanded instead of having taxpayer money wasted on moon colonies and manned trips to Mars.
This is definitely not a waste of money. Once this industry gets started, the possibilities are enormous. First think of the political implications of having a thriving off world colony. What if we could move UN headquarters to Lunar City, the first truly international city? What would it mean for world unity, for peace and human progress? You're worried about the cash? Well the first thing they told me in economics is that technological innovation drives the economy- we were an agricultural planet until technology came along and forged the industrial economy. The technologies developed to build a moon base would filter down, as they always have, and invigorate the economy. Then think about the industry that would follow, that would benefit Earth: off world manufacturing that would get pollution out of our fragile ecosystem, off world (solar) energy generation, off world disposal of hazardous waste. Did you know that on earth, Iron, the most commonly used metal, is mined from Iron Oxide- rust? Did you know that rust is literally covering the surface of mars? It might even get cheaper to extract Iron from Mars than on earth if we keep up this exploration nonsense.
And best of all, think about the scientific opportunities space bases would allow us. A perfect, undisturbed view of the heavens. Super ideal experiment conditions in the form of vacuum and free fall. Greater access to natural resources for particle physics- research stations on mercury interacting with the sun, or on pluto interacting with nothing. Advances in bio-chemistry that would come from vastly improved understanding of planetary/atmosphere physics and chemistry, and study of asteroids and comets, as well as above mentioned 0 g and vacuum. All these opportunities are only accessible if we make a serious, money losing push at first.
I get your cynicism as to the intentions of the politicians but realize, it's not the politicians or the people who are interested in huge profits who are doing this (there are vastly better industries to make money in than space). It's the people who are passionate about such things. And while it may just be another project for the politicians, for the people who choose to devote their lives to its pursuit, space is much more- and it is something worth going about correctly and responsibly. People willingly sacrifice their lives in return for the chance to explore space. To say that NASA is a waste of taxpayer money and no better than waging a war...
[shrug] Let 'em try. Colonization provides many examples of the law of unintended consequences. E.g., the Massaschusetts colonies were founded by some of the most fanatical believers the world has ever seen. The Puritans were the Taliban of their day. Now? Massachusetts in general and Boston in particular are probably the least religious places in the US. You know, when the kids grow up, they get all kinds of funny ideas in their heads.
... Let 'em try. Because absolutely none of the folks here on Earth who are going to try to export their beliefs can predict which way their spiritual children will go.
Realistically, we're going to see all kinds of competing religions up there: Christians from the US and Europe, hard-line Communist believers (who are religious in all but name) from China, Hindus from India, assorted Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Shintos and, so to speak, God knows what-all
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
When asked why we need a permanent moon base, NASA officials had this to say.
How ya like dat?
To me the only sensible thing to do with a moon base is to dig it out of the lunar surface, not place buildings on that same surface. Consider!
Builds require structural materials to maintain their integrity, which means mass to haul into space
There is no protective atmosphere on the moon, so the structures are SOL if a rock happens to come wandering in from space, barring LOTS of mass for protection. (Yes it can happen - where do you think meteor showers come from?)
Radiation on the moon's surface is also not cut down, so same problem as incoming high speed rocks. Materials durability concerns, people concerns, all sorts of fun.
If we put the sucker underground, we get a nice layer of rock on top of the base, which will neatly avoid getting lots of support materials up there and will protect everyone. It would also provide thermal inertia against extreme temperature swings, reducing energy and insulation costs. Sure the view would suck, but I'll bet after a while the view on the moon would get old too. Have a viewing station above for observations/airlock/what have you, but build the bulk of it underground. The moon is relatively stable geologically and the far more active Earth has plenty of underground structures on it, so the real question is digging it out.
So I would suggest looking at ways to hollow out large areas on the moon with minimal equipment. My first thought would be small, low mass automated diggers running off of solar power feeds working slowly over time, so we can learn about the environment as we dig into it. Easy to get up there, and over time they could do serious work if built reliable (think filling up a swimming pool one drop at a time, just in reverse.)
It wouldn't have the neat "space base!" look you see on the covers of science fiction books, but I think it would be much more practical, safe, and useful.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Vacuum is cheap on the moon, but not very good. There are a fair number of trace gasses and dust (when disturbed) which makes it not very clean. We can fairly easily get vacuum in the lab that beats low Earth orbit. Yes, it's expensive; it costs hundreds or thousands of dollars... about a millionth of a moon shot.
---Nathaniel
1. send men and women together to the moon ...
2. set up webcams around the base
3.
4. PROFIT!
-Styopa
Ok none of this is new but...
vacuum industry - there are lots of cool potential manufacturing technologies (and lots of current ones) that require a good vacuum.
Low-G research - kind of like the vacuum industry
Microgravity research - Create a Zero-G environment directly on the moon by taking advantage of the vaccum and low G environment; basically build a linear accelerator mass driver on the equator at the highest elevation. Use it to accelerate a lab to moon oribtal speed at that altitude, let the lab whip around the equator skimming the mountain tops (and passing through the now dormant accelerator every "orbit" - you've basically created a geosynchronous (lunarsynchronous?) labratory. When it's time to deorbit, just capture the velocity back when the lab goes through the accelerator and you'll get back a good portion of the acceleration energy.
Build it right and the scientists can enter and exit the lab in their shirtsleeves, too. About a million times better than doing research on the vomit comit and probably a couple orders of magnitude better than trying to do it on the ISS (if only from a perspective of the amount of equipment / space to store that equipment available on the moon vs. the ISS - especially if vacuum industry on the moon is available by then)
And finally, my favorite... liquid metal mirror observatory. Thanks to the low G, absence of geologic processes, and vacuum, you could build a great reflector. And because the primary mass component is liquid, it bulks very little (carry it up in a tank)
I'm not sure if Mercury will sublimate in vacuum, but it's worth a try right?
So, if your data is REALLY vital, you can store your backups in the ULTIMATE offsite data center!
1. A television station. Local community news. Possibly a shopping channel. Tease on shopping channel that a ticket back to Earth is comming up as an item for sale but never offer it!
2. Magnifiying glasses and mirrors. I've had fun reflecting sun beams in people's eyes. I'm sure the moon people will having doing it to us Earthlings. Only we'll never know who did it.
3. A limitless supply of drugs and other entertainment. If you're never coming back, then you might as well have a hell of a time!
You don't get to space by making budget cuts. With the current situation there is a US rocket company with their most highly advanced rocket motors as surplus motors from the failed N-1 rocket from Russia back from the early 1960's - that's the closest thing available to be able to put together anything as powerful as Von Braun's Saturn V.
The Alan Parson's Project.
If they can't solve the age-related muscle- and bone-deterioration problems by the time I get frail, I want to be able to retire on the Moon. Yes, I know, getting there once will be difficult, but I hope, I'll be able to make it.
And then — many more years of free movement in a comfortable nursing home. With beautiful views, miles of walkways, high-speed Internet (even if some latency remains talking to Earthlings), and monthly visits from family...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm sure The Pirate Bay would like to relocate in case the Sealand thing doesn't work out. After all the Moon has the same legal status as international waters.
I belive this is going to require several months of therapy...
How could slashdot miss the big plot in this one.... it's the cheese there going after. Boeing will fly it back to Earth, while Caterpillar scrapes off the new land for some real mooncheese.
I have to agree that it is a corporate welfare fantasy.
Look at one of my favorite examples: the Chunnel vs. the Big Dig. The Chunnel is 31 miles long, 24 miles under the English Channel. The Big Dig is about 6 miles long, 2.5 miles under Boston Harbor. Wikipedia says the Chunnel cost about 10 billion pounds and the Big Dig has cost about $15 billion "so far". Not much difference between the two. The Chunnel has had a non-fatal fire. The Big Dig leaks like a sieve, the books were cooked to hide the substandard materials used to construct it and it has had a fatal ceiling collapse. Makes you proud to be an American taxpayer, doens't it?
But a person could take any number of examples of bridges to nowhere, Big Pharma and the like that are draining a few billion here and a few billion there of citizen taxpayer dollars until you are talking real money. What I have to wonder isn't how long people will put up with it but how long people _can_ put up with it. Is the typical American so rich he really can be bled indefinitely with little to show for it? I'm guessing not and I think that is an important difference between now and the 60s. You can point out that Apollo had to start from scratch, corporations were probably making a good profit on the deal then too and that the Vietnam war was going on. But the U.S. was in an historic boom, people with well-paying jobs actually made things here and the average household wasn't carrying $7000 in credit card debt. It isn't enough to rebuild the Saturn V or relearn the Apollo program knowledge now residing in nursing homes. We need to get back the best parts of the America that created the Apollo program.
What scares me most I think is the fallout when it becomes undeniably clear to the world and ourselves that we've metastasized from a pragmatic "can-do" nation of the Right Stuff to some schizoid out-of-touch B.S. nation.
Perhaps you meant: Death and Taxes: A Visual Guide to Where Your Federal Tax Dollars Go rather than the domain squatting site budgetgraph.com.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Like you, I used to be a believer. Then I went to space camp and realized that manned spaceflight is an exercise in marketing, not science.
>That's harsh. Apparently corruption managed to land us on the moon, send dozens of probes out into the solar system, and built an International Space Station complete with the capability to take routine space trips every 4 months.
A space station, built at an exorbitant $100 billion, that has delivered very little serious scientific research. That's 18 years of NSF funding... science on the ground in the US could have been transformed with that money in a way not seen since the funding increases that were a response to sputnik. We could have Cassini quality unmanned probes around every planet, and a hubble replacement ready to go, for a fifth of that. But no, we had to have MANNED spaceflight.
>Well the first thing they told me in economics is that technological innovation drives the economy...
Yes. Notice that they didn't jump straight from the agrarian age to the information age. Economies advance in modest steps, and each step is profitable at the time it is made. Until there are compelling economic reasons to go into space, it isn't going to happen. You might call an ancient Mayan trying to create a transistor far sighted, but if he dumps a ton of money into the problem, gets nowhere, and asks for more money, you are a fool to give it to him.
What we need to do is fund r&d on the ground. Eventually materials advances may cheapen the cost of of getting into space. Then everything else follows on it's own. This has already happened for the special case of the communications satelite, because they are light and don't need constant resupply, like people do.
>Did you know that rust is literally covering the surface of mars?
Did you know that iron ore is literally pulled out of holes in the ground in Minnesota? You need to give me very compelling reason to convince me to go to mars for it.
>Advances in bio-chemistry that would come...
NASA has sold manned spaceflight to the US public since Skylab with these kind of boilerplate promises of the great science that will be done in "the ideal laboratory of space". 30+ years later and it hasn't panned out. NASA people who keep hyping these promises are full of crap. Space is an ideal lab for a few things- some fundemental physics, like LISA (LIGO's planned, yet largely unfunded descendant), and for observational astronomy. It is NOT an ideal lab for biochemistry, metalurgy, manufacturing, or anything else that requires people. And putting people up there won't change that fact. As Doug Osheroff, physicist and Columbia accident investigator, put it to me: "The only scientific reason for manned space flight is to study the effects of space on people."
>People willingly sacrifice their lives in return for the chance to explore space.
Fine with me. But don't defend NASA when they make false promises to the taxpayer to get them to foot the bill.
>To say that NASA is a waste of taxpayer money and no better than waging a war.
Better than waging an unnecessary war, of course. But the space station is no better than a pork project along the lines of the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska.
Mass doesn't change, so the opponent will have his normal amount of inertia.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
Good arguments, huh?
Well, I think solar power is a damn good argument to be in space. Even nuclear will eventually run down. Sure, Uranium is cheap now but if 50, 80 percent of earth's energy starts to come from fission? And Fusion is just as bad- hydrogen fusion creates helium, and that's an absolutely irreversible process. We're planning to get hydrogen from the water? So we're going to start running down our planet's water supply to create "clean" power? At the very least we'd need extra-planetary hydrogen sources to not fuck up our oceans. The way I see it, solar is the only infinite power source available to man (well, wind too by virtue of its being created by the sun's heating but it's impractical to carpet the planet with wind mills). All other power sources destroy the planet because they extract power from it. Even things like geothermal cool the mantle/core and if performed on a large enough scale would cause a serious problem. Tidal will eventually destroy the moon's orbit (even if we don't extract power). Hydroelectric has a fundamental limit- a function of the total rainfall and the number/elevation of rivers. Not to mention it rapes the surrounding land. Solar brings power in from the outside, rather than consuming from within. So good argument number 1: long term, impactless survival dictates that we MUST eventually switch to solar. Covering the land with solar cells counts as pollution, so we'd need to build them in space- in orbit and on the moon- and beam the power down.
Another damn good reason is the technology. Our century has evolved, technologically, faster than any other in the history of human existence. A big reason for this is the windfall from space exploration. Instant commmunication to any point on the planet? Sure, most of it TODAY might happen over fiber optic lines on the ocean floors, but we never would have gotten to this point without first launching communication satellites. And we never would've launched satellites unless the Soviets had gotten this wacky, pointless idea to point a rocket straight up. What about air travel- it is actually possible to reach any point on earth within 36 hours from any point, and you don't have to pay an exorbitant amount of money to do it. This is because of advances in jet engine technology, in aerodynamics, materials, navigation, logistics, computers. NASA didn't necessarily pioneer these fields but it definitely had a lot to do with them. For example, NASA was involved very early on in the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics to employ in rockets and study atmospheric re-entry. This technology has been applied to build better jet engines, better (cheaper) wings, and has brought down the price of air travel to the point where most people can afford it. And if there is going to be another revolution in air travel, it will be thanks to work that NASA is the primary researcher in- hypersonic, air breathing Ramjets. Ramjets are directly applicable to NASA's goal to reduce the cost of getting into space, but can also cut travel time to any point on the planet down to two hours (maximum air time, that is). NASA recently tested a mach 11 ramjet. And solar cells- guess who was the very first buyer of solar cells because they needed power where the sun was the only source. Guess who is a big supporter of further solar cell research because of the need to put them on satellites and space stations? The list is long: NASA has been involved in the development of communications technology, optics, energy production, materials, and on and on.
If you can't call these things "real benefits to humanity," then there is no such thing. We can't even start to imagine what sort of technologies will come from a mission to settle the moon and Mars.
And you know, I think romanticism is a damn good reason for space exploration too. Like JFK said when he was pushing for the moon: why fly solo across the Atlantic, why climb the highest mountain? Why does man do crazy, pointless things, and why does it capture
Uh... no. The most powerful booster rocket engine being manufactured in the ex-USSR right now AFAIK is the RD-170 used in the Zenith and Sea Launch vehicles. Which were designed for Energia, which is more recent than the Shuttle. Those modified N-1 engines you were talking about, the NK-33, are a toy compared to them.