No sooner do I write about the building of British nuclear weapons as a wasteful prestige project, then news comes from NASA of their firmed-up plans to build a moonbase by 2020. This seems to more or less follow the plan for a permanent presence on the Moon and manned exploration to Maras as laid down by President Bush in his "vision" speech of 2004. No cost has been stated, but expect something in the tens of billions.
I will state my reservations about such an enterprise. This project will be costly, and of dubious scientific value. Further, the expenditure of such funds will likely stifle the attention needed by more useful yet small-scale projects. A government-agency mission to the moon seems overly inefficient and old-fashioned, and raises potential fears of the weaponization of space.
Yet when all is said and done, I would still rather oppose this project and see it go ahead anyway. At some point humanity must begin to explore and inhabit its solar system on something of a more permanent basis. The fact that to date no human has left the immediate orbit of earth for anything more than a few hours, despite the thousands of pages written and thousands of hours filmed on the subject (both fiction and non-fiction) indicates to me that a permanent settlement on the moon in itself would possess some scientific value. Just how will the human body adapt to life on another heavenly sphere? Surely a moonbase has more lasting value to science and humanity (by capturing the imagination and providing facilities for experiments as yet unplanned) than the obsolete International Space Station and space shuttles, two super-expensive Cold War relics.
I say good job to NASA for finally scrapping the shuttle with plans for a new bold step forward. And I wish even more luck to Virgin Galactic. Carl Sagan once stated that he considered the hybrid government-private business model of the Dutch and English East Indies Companies to be the prime means to further space exploration. I cannot urge the greater participation of business in space travel more strongly.
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As Dr. Kaku has said, why send people into space when we could do it with robots better and cheaper? Robotic exploration of space has been the only productive aspect to the entire space programme in terms of science. The rest is just wasted resources.
Of course I agree that people must colonise space. I think that we should not bother going though until we are ready to start a self-sustainable colonisation. The entire point of it is to better ensure the survival of humanity. That is not in the cards in the next 50 years. What will happen is an accident or sustained poor environment will result in astronaut deaths in Space or on one of the rocks in question. This will result in public disquiet and a huge dent to the Space budget overall.
Public/Private exploration is a good idea and research satelites and robotic exploration should be produced through government prize money instead of government direct spending.
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