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Thank you supersix2, those two points are my main complaints about Obama's proposal as well. Especially #2. The moon isn't Mount Everest. It's not a place that we conquer and then say, "well, that was cool." It's a place where we can do real science, and a place that we could potentially inhabit. The moon is a relatively safe place to experiment with permanent structures before we go to Mars, and a robust presence on the moon would theoretically make it easier to get to Mars in the first place. I also imagine there would be more interest in civilian visits to the moon if there were a more comfortable place to stay for a bit when they got there. Few people are going to seriously want to take a vacation to the moon where they will eat crappy food, sleep on crappy beds, etc. We've barely got a market for Antarctic tourism (relatively speaking); there is certainly not enough market to promote private development of lunar travel. Make it a more hospitable trip and visit - in the process of conducting science - and maybe that could slowly change.
I understand debating the relative worth of returning to the moon vs other manned space missions, but I do not understand the outright dismissive attitude that Obama's statement seemed to convey. Of course, it has long irked me that we haven't been to the moon for about 40 years now. It almost makes the conspiracy theorists seem reasonable*. After all, why would we go to the freaking MOON 6 times over the course of 3.5 years and then just forget about it for 40 years? In the meantime, we've invented the internet so that anyone from around the world can communicate instantly, and we all carry little phones in our pockets that have the computing power of entire buildings back in 1972. In 1980, 2GB of data storage weighed 4,400 pounds, and now it weighs 0.001 pounds. And yet, despite all this advancement, we haven't returned to the moon? It makes absolutely no sense... except, that's what we've done. We've squandered 40 years of space exploration, and sadly I wouldn't be surprised if we squander 40 more. In the meantime, I'll be lucky if we even land on the moon once in my lifetime, let alone Mars.
*I say this only to emphasize how ridiculous it is that we haven't been to the moon in so long. I have never believed in any way whatsoever that the moon landings might have been faked.
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"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling
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