NASA is lost in Space

Originally posted by samkent
reply to post by MarioOnTheFly

 

Imagine a scenario...a hypo one....good ol' US establishes a moon base, and after 20 years of research they discover huge deposits of oil, gold, whatever...take your pick.

Ok I have.
Scenario: We know there are gold bars stacked in piles waiting for us to collect with no strings attached by ET.

How much would it cost us to rerun Apollo and pile the bars in place of the rocks and return to Earth?
Do the math.
It would cost far more than the gold is worth.

Apollo 841 lbs.
gold $1700/oz
Returned value $22.8 million

edit on 5-12-2012 by samkent because: gold calculation

I'm not disputing the calculus, but we keep going in circles. You keep banging up the numbers, and I say...that's the problem in the first place.

Here...if NASA or any other space agency would provide me with food and logging, I would devote my life to space exploration for free. Sure I'm not a space engineer, but I could become one if educated. There are many people around the world working on things for free, because it is their passion. Many people do humanitarian work for free. And I'm not talking about rich people. The cost you speak of is really only a fiction of the society. Nothing is costly if we work openly together. If there is passion for it. As a member before me said...The Earth provides all the necessary resources for free. All that is needed is a will to do it.

If we weren't thinking about the cost all the time...I claim we would be further advanced tech wise than we are today. Although, money is a driving force behind the progress, it is also a deterrent of progress.

I always hoped we would set up shop on the moon.

That way after we've finished destroying this planet, we could all move to the moon and destroy that next... Locusts need to do what locusts need to do.

Sign me up as the first volunteer to get the hell off of this planet.

Originally posted by MrMaybeNot
reply to post by ownbestenemy

 

Because its our logical evolutional step? Knowing the unknown?

I don't discourage it, but why back to the moon? To quell skeptics? To prove we have the technology?

I am not opposed to missions back to the moon, but if they are just to prove we can do it, that era is done with. If we are going there for exploration, send a rover. If we are going there to study if we can live on it, build upon it and take advantage of it, then lets go. But just to go, to say we went again is a waste.

Originally posted by lostbook
According to this article, NASA needs to focus on its destination before it makes its trip(s) into Space. Their new goal is: "Pioneering: Sustaining U.S. Leadership in Space." DUH! NASA's problem is that they are passive and not passionate about Space exploration. We got a man on the Moon in 12 years and now after 40 years, even with better Technology, we haven't been back to the Moon-publicly. I think we have been back secretly and there is much more going on in Space than we know. Check out the article/


www.space.com...

Nasa's goals are generally guided by the President of the United States and funding for those goals are provided by congress. If you wanted Space Exploration we should have voted in Newt Gingrich. Nasa can't do squat without funding and congress is not going to fund Nasa without public pushing them to do so.

Originally posted by DJW001
reply to post by MarioOnTheFly

 

Thank God Columbus never thought about things like "getting something out of it" before setting of in to the unknown, otherwise...who knows if you would even be alive today.

. The astronauts brought back scientifically interesting but economically useless rocks.

Only because of their limited time. There is gold in them there hills.

reply to post by xxshadowfaxx

They are talking about sending a man to mars soon.

I think its very convenient that they haven't sent a man back to the moon. I think its a great way of not telling the public anything at all about it. I think the moon has many secrets they don't want us to know. Just the metals on the moon alone would make the trip worth it. Lots of rare earth stuff there.

I'm sorry but you are wrong in each of your statments.
They are just dreaming about sending a man to Mars. And it won't be soon. Many decades away, if not 100 years. We just don't have the tech or money to do it.

We haven't been back to the Moon because there is no reason to go. There are no rare metals on the Moon that we can't get cheaper down here.

Give it a few years and China will put something on the Moon and then get bored with it.