Yana Usdi

And another no. Unknown author? BS allegations that a moment of common sense should easily overwhelm? For example this prize...

"Did you ever wonder why the Moon landings stopped and why we have not tried to build a Moon Base?"

Actually no I hadn't, and I'm surprised that anyone else did either. We went to prove that we could and to see what was there, we left because we found nothing but rocks and it wasn't worth the cost to go. From stats I've heard recently it costs about 5 times what gold is worth to move an equivalent amount of weight from the earth to the moon. These things get cheaper with time, it was as much or more back then. Moving enough water, food, or anything else to establish a base would have bankrupted us. What function would that base have served? None that I can think of, not with the technology that we had at the time. And it's questionable today.

It was a great political and scientific coup at the time but it also almost killed the space program because it cost so very much in a time period where we were already heading into the first oil crisis and other problems of the sort. The public didn't see a worthwhile cost/benefit from it. That's a good part of why as much as I love the idea of space exploration I'm in no rush for a manned mission today, to the moon or to Mars. Between things like Hubble and the Mars Rovers we're getting a lot more science and a lot more public interest for a fraction of the cost of a manned mission to either of them. For now, until we have a reason to go ourselves, we'll get more bang and knowledge for the buck with robotics. When we have a reason to go, then we should go, but not just so we can say we've been there.