| MontanaHatchet said: I don't approve of what the money is being spent on. However, I must ask you Stickball. What would be the benefit of space travel at this point? Why should this project have been continued? Seems utterly pointless, especially when the country is doing terribly economically. |
What is the point of land or sea travel? Was there a benefit to the colonization of the Americas? After all, Eurasia had plenty of room for population expansion, right?
In a nutshell, space travel and the development of business and industry outside of Earth can and will become the largest point of economic growth in the mid to late 21st century. There are many resources available in space that are not available on Earth, or are in very rare quantities.
Some examples:
- Solar energy. Much more available and usable via solar arrays vs. Earth-bound arrays. Due to production and transmission techniques, space-based arrays will be much more efficent than on earth.
- Helium 3. I've always been saying it and will continue to say it, but HE3 is very important for the development of fusion reactors, as well as other products such as HE3 refrigerators (which are the most efficent refrigeration systems in existence). HE3 costs $20 million USD a pound.
- Titanium. The moon contains this material in much more abundant quantities than the Earth does. Couple this with metal foam, and it would be very valuable to produce titanium metal foam in-situ and ship back to Earth
- Rare earths. Currently, rare earth productions are dropping from Western producers and China holds control of 90% of all rare earths, worldwide. These are used in many of high-tech applications from lasers to nuclear batteries. With them having control over such a dominating, critical number of resources, acquisition from non-earth sources would ensure a balance of power.
- Metal foams. They cannot be produced easily on Earth, as they require nanoparticles to ensure proper expansion. In a zero-G environment, it is much more economical to produce these materials. Primarily, metal foams are derived from aluminum, which is very abundant on the moon (Lunar regolith is comprised of approximately 15% aluminum,
Those are just a few non-scientific reasons for space industry off the top of my head. In the end, whomever decides to make strong pushes to space will open up great economic opportunities for their nation. We can argue that there are so many problems in America, which I agree with, but at the same time, we are losing our manufacturing and basis of actually producing products for consumption. Acquiring resources outside of Earth can help that by creating an American industry in space.
And one should note the cost of NASA and other space-based endeavours. The federal government spends 0.5% of its budget on NASA which provides a decent number of jobs. Don't get me wrong, I dislike the government and what they do, but wouldn't it be better to invest the stimulus money, or other things the govenment wastes, on projects that may actually yield returns for Americans?
And as stated, if Obama really wanted to cut the budget, I am fine with that, even if it meant not going to the moon. What I have a problem with is that he is spending more money on NASA. But its going to climate change. That is where the atrocity is. You take something that could return great results and benefits, and put more money into something else everyone else is working on. Way to go NASA! NASA could separate themselves from every other Space agency and put forther great project to help America, and yet they're getting stuck on the whole climate change debate.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
