Re: Back to the moon? When?

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 03:31:06 -0800, Ian Parker <ianparker2@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On 9 Nov, 04:22, "Erich Kohl" <ek...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi everyone,

First and foremost, let me just say that I do believe that the United
States was actually on the moon.

However, I am in a debate with someone who wants to know why it's
taking us (or anyone else for that matter) so long to go back there.
After all, if it was done once before with 1960's technology and
know-how, what's causing the delay in the expedition this time?

My theory is that it must have something to do with politics and
budget, combined with the fact that it might not be as high of a
priority as it once was when the U.S. was in an overt space race with
the Soviet Union.

Any enlightenment that can be offered will help, because I'm not sure
how else to steer my argument.

Most of the other responses have been about the management of NASA. I
think they have a point but there is one very fundamental reason. This
is the fact of sophisticated computing and the advance of AI. If you
can gain all the information you need by robotic probes what is the
point of sending humans, risking lives etc etc?

The point is, A: human lives are *meant* to be risked, on account of
they are each and every one of them guaranteed to be lost whether you
risk them or not, and B: humans are roughly a thousand times better
than the best contemporary robots at doing the sort of things space
scientists care about (and better still at doing the sorts of things
politicians care about), so sending them off to do space science and
whatnot is a really amazingly good way to risk a human life.


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*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
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