Its something I guess. I still believe that we need to put serious money into propulsion research otherwise this is all essentially a PR exercise. No one is seriously going to consider widespread usage of the solar system unless we can get travel times down. Who is going to want to be a worker on Mars if it takes 6 months to get home after the shift which would have to be measured in years to make the whole thing worthwhile.
Actually looks like a step BACKWARD from Apollo, in that they need to use 2 launches from earth to get the crew and all the components of the spacecraft into earth orbit. On the bright side, the proposed lunar lander carries a crew of 4 to the lunar surface (vs. 2 for the Apollo LM). The reentry capsule and service module will be left in lunar orbit unmanned, which seems kind of risky to me, seeing as it is the only ticket home for the crew on the moon. Would kinda suck to be on the moon and watch your ride come crashing out of lunar orbit because the autopilot crapped out and a thruster stuck on or something, and there was nobody on board to shut it down....
What a giant waste of money. I guess y'all have no poverty or disease or substandard infrastructure in the US if you can afford this crap. What did we gain from men on the moon? What do we stand to gain from sending more, or going further out to Mars. Are we going to rape those planets too? Did you read the part about how they plan to leave shit up there for future missions? Well what if we have a huge oil crash and there is no more money or energy left for a space program. We'll be able to look up at the moon at night and know that it's just one more place that we left our shit lying around in. And even if they do go back for it, i still cant stand to look up there and know that there is manmade shit sitting on it all the time. When will people wake up and get over their hard-on with technology and realize when they cross a line? ARRRGGG!!!
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html If we as a species waited until poverty and disease are completely eliminated before exploring our surroundings, we never would have crawled out of our caves. And as the above link explains, many of the technologies that help fight poverty and disease CAME FROM the space program. Unfortunately, there will ALWAYS be problems here on earth, moon mission or no moon mission. Space exploration represents a tiny share of the US budget, and even if NASA was completely eliminated, the resulting savings compared to the problems of poverty and disease would be like pissing in the ocean. If you REALLY want to find the causes of economic injustice, I would suggest that you look at Wall St. and the Pentagon, rather than NASA....
What a spoiled world we live in that we can call $104 billion a piss in the bucket... NASA is not the only money waster in this country and not even the biggest, you're right. No problem, nothing we discuss here or anywhere can be isolated as a problem without tying it to everything else, especially where spending is concerned. And dont think projects like this dont have anything to do with the Pentagon. Military strategy has been an important part of politics since long before the Bush family came down out of the trees (what was that, 200 years ago?) This isn't purely about 'exploration' and the miraculous life-improving discoveries the space program can bring us... I've heard the we would have never gotten out of our cave debate many times and it doesnt wash for me. While it certainly has a fair deal of logic, it allows us to continue to leave people, programs and infrastructure in this country (and others) extremely underfunded. Try telling the government that the $3000 in back taxes you owe them is a drop in a bucket. They certainly dont treat any amount as such. I look at it like this. What if this country were a family? You've got sick and hungry relatives in the house, the house needs major repairs and basically has no heat, clean water or proper sanitation, yet you buy a $300,000 RV, because exploration is such an important endevour.
Not to mention that the ENTIRE $104B budget of the new moon mission (spread over 13 years) is less than a THIRD of the current military budget for ONE YEAR.
