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Technology is the easy part
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/sc...a-moon-colony-
technology-is-the-easy-part.html?ref=science Putting a manned base on the Moon would be the easy part from a technology perspective. With millions of Americans living in abject poverty with no access to healthcare (akin to third world countries), little retirement savings and no jobs, it will become difficult for politicians to pursuade the public to support another Moon race, this time around against the Chinese. With hundreds of thousands of bridges, tunnels, roads and overpasses in disrepair, it seems the U.S. needs a lot more taxation to get its house in order, something which the Republicans will fight tooth and nail over. Where then, is the money going to come from? More cuts in welfare and social security? I personally believe that it would be much cheaper to spend all-out on another Moon program (if it were to be approved) rather than smearing out the costs over decades. The Apollo program gobbled up 4% of the federal budget between 1962 and 1970 yet it was done for a comparably low price, about $150 billion in current dollar value. The ISS program has cost hundreds of billions with little to show for it, except for a permanent manned presence in space and dubious experiments on all sorts of creatures in low-G. The promised returns in new medicines and semiconductors haven't been realized. In addition, the Apollo program may actually have netted a profit from all the technologies developed for it. I'm not aware of any studies which put a hardball figure on this, but the total costs would have been offset for a large part by these economic effects. |
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