NASA to crash $79 million spacecraft into moon,

[Onyxmeth]

ManusJustus said:

Onyxmeth said:

ManusJustus said:

Onyxmeth said:

What's the point of the lunar base?

Its mankinds first step to becoming a space-faring civilization.  Earth wont last forever, and we cant put all our eggs in one basket.

What do you mean by Earth won't last forever? It's lasted an awfully long time already. Is something happening in the next couple hundred or thousand years to change this?

As the sun runs out of hydrogen in its core, it will start to fuse helium which will increase its surface area and the amount of heat the Earth recieves from the sun.  As Earth's interior cools, its iron core will solidify causing Earth's magnetic field to weaken, and as Earth's magnetic field weakens the planet will be subject to radiation while solar wind hastens the removal of the atmosphere.

Of course, this process is on the scale of millions of years, but why not get an early start?

Maybe because we're currently in a bit of a pinch economically and the money NASA receives for these pet projects could be better spent elsewhere? I'm not saying cut them out forever or disband NASA, but this is really not the time to be spending millions and millions on space projects that won't have any followup for years and are doing this because of a situation that will happen millions of years from now.