Quote:
Originally Posted by Seth Manson
Why do we need to go back to the moon? We've been there 6 times already. Its 238,897 miles away and there really isnt much we can do there that we cant do on the space station.
Its much cheaper to travel to the space station which is only 220 miles away and we have already built than to go to the moon, which is 1000x as far and set up new operations. You have to land on the moon and it has gravity which means you need power to take off. It takes fuel to make power. Fuel is heavy and has to be transported to the moon, there are no gas stations there. Transporting fuel means you dont have as much room to transport cargo. I'm sure you seen pictures of how small the lunar landing craft actually were.
With the space station you just dock, and then undock and drift away when its time to leave.
I think in the past 40yrs, NASA has done great things. A lot of thing we have today are the result of aerospace research.
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You are debating something you heard someone else say once or something. I don't think aerospace research has failed to contribute to human knowledge or more general useful technology. I'm not talking about doing additional manned scientific missions to re-document the documented.
I just am disappointed that casually affordable commercial space travel is not yet a reality. A lot of futurists expected it would be by now. That doesn't mean zilch has come out of the space program, but it is still a disappointment to a lot of people.
The thread question was whether folks would like to visit the moon, not whether NASA has done anything of any use ever.