"drdoody" wrote in message
m...

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in message
news

You must have a very limited definition of "never". We could be
launching craft from the lunar surface in 20 years easily. If in a
hurry, then 10-15 years. Not what I would call "never."

So, let me see if I get this straight.


This means launching the stuff required to build them to the Moon,
assembling/building them there and then launching them?

The point of this is what exactly?

You're missing the point entirely.

Hardly.

I say get a permanent industrial presence
started on the moon and let corporations take over space exploration from
there.

You do realize how many decades this will be before it's true? And how
much mass needs to be launched to the Moon before this becomes a reality?

In the meantime if you can afford to launch that much mass to the Moon
in a cheap enough fashion to be affordable, your cost to launch space probes
becomes low enough as to not make it any more practical to launch than from
Earth.

We get them to the moon, they mine it and science hitches a ride to
the stars. Putting a governmental agency in charge of space exploration on
any level higher than what NASA has already accomplished is stupidity.
Would
you ride a ship built and flown by the spacefaring equivalent of the US
Postal Service? I wouldn't.

I see future exploration of space happening the same way that exploration
of
the Gulf Of Mexico has. Sure, the US government has done some surveys down
there, but most of the mapping has been done by the petrochemical
industry.
Why? Because the oil industry are the people who have a vested interest in
what's at the bottom of the Gulf *and* have the funding to go looking for
it. Sure, they're motivated by profit. But there have been several
discoveries made by them that wouldn't have been made otherwise.

Doc