In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
Herman Rubin wrote:

Can a program that's going to peak out at around three to four percent
of the entire national budget be justified by the promise that it might
fetch back several hundreds of pounds of rocks from the Moon?



We should have kept using Saturn V; it is still one of the
best launch vehicles made. And it is not the pile of rocks
brought back from the moon, but what we have learned from
them, which matters. We would have learned much more if
we had not canceled the last few Apollo trips,


What's not widely known is that NASA itself didn't have much of a
problem with the later flights getting canceled; after Apollo 13 they
realized that what they were doing inherently had a lot of risk
associated with it, and if they kept it up for enough flights they were
probably going to lose a crew sooner or later, so they thought it was
better to end up on a high note, and ditch the later flights.

This is why it should be done without government support
or interference. Many men were lost in exploration
projects of all types, with few problems, even if they
were government run. Any frontier has risks.

Behold the turtle. If he sticketh not out the neck,
he maketh no progress. It has been this way for mankind
farther back than we have records.

and we would
have done well to start a lunar base which could provide us
with still more knowledge.


Very expensive, and barring the development of some sort of super rover
or something similar to the 2001 Moonbus, you'd be very limited in
regards to the area you could examine- say a circle just ten or twenty
miles out from the base.

It is not necessary to have such limited ideas. And if you
had such a limited base, which mirrors for solar power, more
could be built on the spot.

That's pretty minuscule in comparison to the total area of the Lunar
surface.
The problem with the rover or rocket bus idea is that you'd have to send
two everywhere together in case one broke down, so that its crew
wouldn't be stranded beyond walking distance from the base.

See the above.

Using the money instead to get
people on welfare to have larger families, in an already
overpopulated world, which is what we have been doing, is
far worse.



Welfare doesn't cost as much as most people think:
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-runawaywelfare.htm
In fact, in 1993, it was dwarfed by defense spending, which was itself
put in second place by Social Security:

"Argument

One of the most popular myths is that welfare is a serious drag on the
economy. Actually, it barely registers on the radar screen. The most
vilified form of welfare is Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(AFDC), which allegedly gives poor mothers a financial incentive to
avoid work and have babies. Yet in 1992, AFDC formed only 1 percent of
the combined federal and state budgets. Food stamps also took up 1
percent. Both programs cost $24.9 billion each, comprising 1 percent
each of the combined federal, state and local budget of $2,487 billion. (1)

Comparing the size of federal AFDC to other federal programs puts a
great deal in perspective:

Federal AFDC Expenditures as Compared to Federal Spending in Other Areas
(1993) (2)

Agency $ billions
--------------------------
AFDC 12
Medicaid 76
Medicare 131
Defense 281
Social Security 305 "

Medicare and Medicaid are pure welfare. At least 1/3 of
Social Insecurity is welfare. Subsidized housing is
welfare. The school lunch program is welfare. There
are many other government projects which are welfare.
Any time there is a means test for a benefit, the benefit
is welfare. Any time money is taxed and used to give
benefits to others, that is welfare. The reason not all
of Social Insecurity is welfare is that those who paid
in more get more, up to a certain point.

The Roman Republic was brought down by bread and circuses,
and the founding fathers knew this. They also thought the
Athenian Republic was so destroyed.

All welfare eligibility rules are high-rate income taxes.

--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558