While I think it's great that NASA is eye-ing the moon again, I feel that they shouldn't have stopped with the Apollo program and it's moon-oriented missions. But of course there was the war(s) and the high cost of space explorations, and I don't mean in the terms of human lives because that is costly irregardless but it's part of exploration anyway... (more on that in a minnit). But the high costs from greedy developers and contractors who build the rockets and shuttles and everything else for the space program that make such ventures
so expensive for the tax payers. Example: it costs $450 MILLION dollars for an average Space Shuttle mission.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html
We are way behind in our space program in that we haven't scratched the surface of Arthur Clark's vision of 2001. We should've already had a permanent base on the moon, peopled by all races and all countries and all working together to benefit mankind. We should already in 2006 be doing manned long-journey's to the farthest reaches of our own solar-system.
Now we're finding out Mars has great potential for human habitation (even on a limited scale). A launch from a moon base would benefit us greatly in cutting the distance down, maybe not by too much but enough to cut down on fuel consumption in trying to break free of a gravitational pull. Perhaps if NASA says that Mars shows a rich oil deposit under the surface that the oil-companies will rush to fund the space program in an effort to be the first ones to drill there. <sarcastic>
That the costs in human lives in exploration has always been high. How many sailors died before Cook finally managed to reach the indies? How many trappers and explorers died before Lewis and Clark? How many died trying to reach the North and South Poles before Peary and Edmundsen? How many died attempting to summit Everest before Sir Edmund Hillary planted his country's flag there? How many men are still dying daily from curiosity trying to figure out the mysteries of women?
rolleyes: )
Now figure the costs of those who had died in the space program? Compare those who have died in (
all) the wars since Presidents Kennedy and Krushev began the program(s) way back when, this includes Americans, Russians, Chinese, etc.
But greed, selfishness, war-mongering and hatred continues to stagnates man's capability to reach the stars which has been a common dream for centuries (yea even for several millenias) all around the globe. Something the entire planet can contribute to in reaching that dream.
So for now these have to be postponed or drawn out over decades instead of years until enough money can be raised to achieve them.
Sad, I think.
