"dasun" wrote in message
oups.com...
Science is not the reason for going up - that is philosophical -
science is what you do when you are there, along with all the house
keeping chores. Colonisation, if it happens at all, is generally not
what you do when you first arrive on a new world, as the history of
earth exploration will attest, first you look around and then you
decide where to stay and why and that may take decades or centuries.
In short science is a very useful activity to perform if you have
decided to go to new worlds in the first place. Besides, find a
politician that understands science!

None of that will happen with the high cost that NASA is building into the
program. I agree with Rand's blog that NASA is likely to have four or less
flights per year to the Moon. This is nowhere near a colony, and at a cost
of $7 billion per year, you're not going to find anyone who would want to
pay to scale that up to colony size.

What's holding us back is high launch costs. NASA's exploration plan does
nothing to address this issue.

Jeff
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