Written by: Beck

What is the point of going back to the moon?

I've always been a science buff, and have long had a fascination with astronomy. I think the first moon landing was amazing, and don't think it's hyperbolic when people describe it as the greatest accomplishment in the history of mankind. I can see the reasons for going the first time--the scientific discovery yielded alone nearly justifies it, plus we were in a race with the Soviets to capture the hearts and minds of the entire world. The first superpower to the moon would send a message to the rest of the world which, at the time, was still trying to pick the likely Cold War winner and align themselves with the proper gravy train.

But what will we gain now by returning, apart from an additional umpteen billion dollars in spent tax payer money? Why do I get the feeling that this is all about keeping unelected bureaucrats employed & burnishing Washington egos? Do we really expect to yield the sort of scientific windfall that the original NASA operations generated? Velcro was a great invention and all, but the price tag for this sort of operation would be better put to use by private sector for-profit industrialists who can direct their efforts more efficiently and productively, to say nothing of the multiplier effect of never taking those umpteen billion dollars from tax payers in the first place.

Going back to the moon today would be akin to rebuilding the pyramids with industrial cranes & poured cement and expecting people to regard it as an achievement comparable with the Egyptians' accomplishments 4000 years before.

Update: Another point occurred to me during an IM conversation with regular INCITE commenter Drethlin. The simple process of technology development, innovation, and fabrication has radically changed since the 1960s when the original moon program was launched. No longer necessary or desired is the Manhattan Project style massive budget project. The inefficiencies, bureaucracies, and coordination implicit in such large scale plans create more waste and problems than they solve. The work by Scaled Composites in their bid for the X-Prize serves to illustrate that nicely. For less money than it costs to launch a space shuttle, a privately funded and built manned rocket has reached outer space. By the time the government is done planning the designs for Moon Base One, privately backed, profit motivated firms could be tulip farming on Mars. There has been a paradigm shift away from the super-large approach to technology, and no one has bothered to inform the United States government.