citizen01

Well at the request of our favorite president NASA is preparing to build a permanent outpost on the moon. The advantages to this are absolutely minimal and it is widely excepted by modern science that there is very little left for us to learn from the moon which is why we have not bothered sending people a second time. Regardless of your politics how do you feel about that much money going toward such a worthless endeavor?

BigMURR

Well if you consider all the advances due to space travel and research there might be some pros to this like preparing ourselves for colonization of mars possibility.

citizen01

We could build a simulation for a small FRACTION of the cost.

DirtyMexican

or we could spend 300 billion on education and not waiste our time thinking about living on mars or the moon, the space program has its benefits, but spending that much money on something that is eventually going to fail is just retarded.
I agree with citizen.

BigMURR

Well true but I'm sure (though not positive) there are certain things that can only be done at the site.

I think this will be a first step even though it may not show any positives at first glance.

citizen01

MURR, if you can find some of those things and then tell me how they are more significant than what 300 BILLION dollars could buy if applied elsewhere I would appreciate it. Until then I will continue to be disgruntled.

BigMURR

I'll be honest with I think the idea of settlement is a good idea as a whole, but I don't think it was the wisest of decisions given the current economy and situations. So in the end, I do agree the money could have been better spent.

DirtyMexican

well I agree with the space program I live here and it does effect me (local economy) but for example, why not fix whats wrong with the space program now, first things first the shuttle, they are flying a gremlin(if you will) into space and when it blows up they act like it was a fail proof incident and insted of spending all this money on fixing something that obviously needs some attention, they want to go and do something like build a colony on the moon or on mars? first we should fix or ways of getting to space and then worry about living there. I think its a scam and walmart is just trying to bulid a walmart on the moon before anyone else, I mean this is Bush's Idea and we all now he gets his suits and haircuts at WalMart.

All this Mexican is saying is first lets make a more fail-proof way of gettting to Space, then worry about living there.
Everytime the Shuttle has issues everyone around here freaks and there is all this mumbojumbo about if the shuttle doesnt fly we may have to shut the program down, blah i say,
if this is such a concern then we need to prioritize the billions of dollars they are about to spend and fix the issues the program has now instead of worrying about walmart on the moon.

Jenna

I don't even believe we landed on the moon to begin with.

I hate NASA, freeze dried icecream and Flight of the Navigator too.

Putting that much money into the space program makes me sick. Maybe if he runs out of money, he'll have to pull the plug on the war early? ;)

seattledave

this month's popular science and has a big article on this, and NASA's lead administrator is being interviewed about this on NPR tomorrow morning, if anyone wants to know more.

Baine

Why bother to show you anything. Your mind is obviously closed already.


How about we stop the third world charity parade. How can we feed the starving in
other countries and yet still have starving children here? Talk about wasted money.
They take or money and then complain about it or worse yet use it to attack us. We
are not responsible for all the bad **** in the world.

TrafficinLA

Mmm...authentic moon pie...

citizen01

LOL... how is my mind closed? I asked him to find advantages worth that kind of money... I did not say "don't bother trying to find anything because there are no advantages". It seems you may be an advocate of such a station, I hope it isn't too closed minded of me to ask why.

Jenna

Because it's a debate. I, too, am curious to read what MURR backs up his opinion with.

Skeorx13

I hope the first statement is a joke... Or a certain astronaut might punch you in the jaw. I love that freeze dried ice cream. I used to work at a store that sold it and I'd always sneak a package when the boss wasn't looking. Flight of the Navigator was cool too so boo to you.

I do agree that it's a bit ridiculous to spend that much money on it now, but I am intrigued by the idea. It could be a good station for research, not only for low gravity experiments but also for space-time distortion research amongst other things. Maybe some kind of signal amplifiers for communicating better with our extraterrestrial devices. DirtyMexican has some good points though as well. We really do need to revamp the shuttle program before we start any other major manned ventures. Supposedly they were working on a new shuttle design but I can't recall the year they were supposed to start making them. Plus there was the civilian that won that contest to make a non-shuttle spacecraft that went into orbit by a carrier plane rather than booster rockets. Is that being developed further? If not, why?

Jenna

The first statement isn't really a joke. That certain astronaut can hit me in the jaw so I can sue him for millions, lol. NASA probably pays their actors pretty well so I'm sure he has got a few bucks.

tjbartjr

I'd rather spend $200-300 billion on creating a permanent facility on the moon than wasting the same amount on a pointless war that has cost thousands of lives on both sides. Besides, a big push for the exploration of space is a huge bonus to the economy. It provides thousands of jobs across the country in different sectors, it encourages more people to focus on their education to work on the cutting edge, it gives people across the US a positive goal to look forward to, and the technology used to get there helps to push advances here on Earth. And eventually you'd get to see a live earth-rise broadcast in HD, and how cool would that be?

Skeorx13

Do you know what time that is supposed to air? Does popular science have this article online or is that something you just have to buy in the store?

citizen01

skeorx,
You know I value science but nothing discovered from low gravity experiments will produce anything worth 300 BILLION dollars. Think about all the earth related research that money could buy.

Skeorx13

Next you'll be telling us that 911 was carried out by our own people...