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Why Humans Must Return To The Moon
from the why,-one-of-these-days... dept
Roland Piquepaille writes "Space.com gives us "10 Reasons to Put Humans Back on the Moon." While some of these reasons seem obvious, like our needs for dreams or a common goal for nations to collaborate, some are less expected, like generating energy from lunar power stations. This also could lead to the arrival of space tourism and to a better knowledge of our past through the analysis of craters and rocks in situ. And many new things also might be invented on the Moon just to live there. Finally, with men on the Moon, future explorations of Mars or asteroids could be easier to organize. The original article is spread over ten pages, so I put the full list of these ten reasons on my blog as a single page for your convenience, along with short quotes and other references. "
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Reason #11
11: so we can stop making top 10 lists about why we need to go to the moon.
I think the real reasone will become very evident over the next 50 to 100 years: because we can't control ourselves, as a species, from destroying the house we live in... and if we stay on this rock called "earth" nature will eventually get us anyway.
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Uncompelling
I don't find any of these reasons especially compelling, especially when considered against the massive price tag that such a program would obviously possess.
The reason for the original moon mission was "Because if we don't the Russians will win", with a large side-serving of "Because we can". The technology wins were bonuses, unexpected winfalls. Such an argument of peripheral technological and product progress is not a reasonable argument for such a mission. What technology has the Space Shuttle program provided us plebes? The ISS is too young to ask the same question about -- but eventually we are going to have to ask.
I also don't buy the beaming-power-from-space argument -- hands up everyone who would live next to a receiving station... especially when the guidance computers on the transmitter 'wander'.
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Re: Uncompelling
"What technology has the Space Shuttle program provided us plebes?"
See: http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/shuttle.htm
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