It would have been inconceivable to a reasonably intelligent adult in 1968 that the U.S. wouldn't AT LEAST have a permanent base on the moon in 2007. The technology was in place, the value of the resources to be gained (e.g. Helium 3) were obvious. Something has held our country back from what seemed like a slam dunk only a few decades ago.
Thirty-nine years ago, with the Apollo program already in full gear and mankind's first steps on the moon only a year away, Stanley Kubrick encapsulated author Arthur C. Clarke's vision for humanity's near future beyond our planet with his landmark epic "2001: A Space Odyssey." In the film, space travel is commonplace by 2000, as at least two colonies have been established on the moon, including the American Clavius moon base. Manned missions to Jupiter are feasible and hotels exist in orbit as part of a revolving space station. Commercial space flight is routine and is undertaken by corporations as well as national space agencies.
At the time, "2001" was praised by critics for its realistic depiction of the near future. Much was made by MGM of this aspect of the film in its promotion, claiming in a 1968 publicity brochure that "Everything in '2001: A Space Odyssey' can happen within the next three decades," and..."most of the picture will happen by the next millennium."
So what happened?
The answer, unfortunately, is all too obvious: American war-mongering.
It would have been inconceivable to a reasonably intelligent adult in 1968 that the U.S. wouldn't AT LEAST have a permanent base on the moon in 2007. The technology was in place, the value of the resources to be gained (e.g. Helium 3) were obvious. Something has held our country back from what seemed like a slam dunk only a few decades ago.
First off, I think it's important to understand what is so critical about maintaining a permanent presence on the moon. Here is one benefit.
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http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0397/0397gaz2.html
Mining the Moon: Not Just Pie in the Sky
Many investors these days are putting their dollars into the emerging markets of eastern Europe and Asia. If a former astronaut has his way, however, they will shift their attention to another business frontier -- one about 240,000 miles away.
Harrison Schmitt, a member of the Apollo 17 lunar mission 25 years ago and a former U.S. Senator from New Mexico, outlined the possibilities for commercial ventures on the moon in a talk he gave last month as part of a visiting lecture series sponsored by the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Schmitt and a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin, where he serves as an adjunct professor, have been putting together a business plan for potential lunar enterprises that would include mining Helium 3 from the moon's surface and sending it back to Earth for use as an alternative power source.
If a Helium 3-based fusion reactor were to be developed and introduced in 2015, Schmitt predicted, it could capture half the U.S. electricity-production market by 2050. Other commercial uses for fusion technology might include medical-isotope production and mine-detection equipment. But the pursuit of profit should not be the only reason to invest in the moon's resources, Schmitt suggested. With the world's population expected to reach 10 billion people by 2050, it's crucial to develop cheaper, more efficient, and environmentally safer energy sources than fossil fuels and fission reactors. Continuing to rely on fossil fuels for energy-production could increase the "greenhouse gases" in Earth's atmosphere, Schmitt said, while nuclear reactors now use fission technology, which produces high levels of radioactive waste. A Helium 3-based fusion reactor, however, could generate energy with less radioactivity, higher efficiency, and probably a lower cost.
"If all of this is so attractive, then why hasn't it been pursued more vigorously?" he asked. "There are two good reasons. One of them is that the physics is tougher. You also need a fuel supply." While the U.S. government has been reluctant to invest in such a project, having already spent billions of dollars on other energy research, Schmitt noted that Japan is investing "something like $40 million a year [in] the technology of developing a reactor system compatible with Helium 3."
Earth's inventories of Helium 3 are very low, but there are an estimated one million tons on the lunar surface, mainly imbedded in an ore called ilmenite. To tap into the moon's huge supply of Helium 3, researchers will have to find ways to get mining equipment there and carry it back to Earth more cheaply, Schmitt said. Even so, the capital needed to support such a venture could amount to about $10-15 billion over a 15-year period.
"Is $15 billion an unreasonable capital requirement on the part of the private sector? Probably not," he said, citing the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline and the Eurotunnel as private projects that cost a similar amount of money. "We're talking about a scale of investment that is not outside the scale of what has already happened."
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While the ability to provide half of U.S. electricity production by 2050 would seem reason enough to get our butts in gear and get back to the moon, there are some other reasons as well, including, most obviously, securing a much cheaper and safer platform for further space exploration. I won't bother quoting anyone on why this is the case because it should be obvious. Gravity and earth's atmosphere are the enemies of space exploration, as every NASA or Russian disaster I can think of proves. The moon has very little of the former and none of the latter.
But we must explain to 1968 Joe Public why the U.S. has ignored what seemed both so obvious and inevitable several decades ago.
If you count all the NASA programs and research that went into the moon race with the Soviet Union, the project cost roughly $100 billion in 1994 terms.
http://www.asi.org/...
I'm not an economist so I have no idea how that number translates to a 2007 economy, but just for the sake of argument let's double it. $200 billion.
In September of 2005, a report called "The Iraq Quagmire" was released by two Beltway think tanks stating, at that time, the Iraq War had cost some $204 billion, or an average of $727 per U.S. citizen. The report was significant because it was the first that acknowledged the Iraq War was now more expensive than the Vietnam War, inflation included.
http://www.antiwar.com/...
Of course, now the Iraq War is getting close to $500 billion (approaching $1,800 per U.S. citizen) with no end in sight.
Vietnam cost $200 billion, Iraq has cost $500 billion and counting. Could someone please explain to me what we have actually achieved in either of these wars? Have either of these wars accomplished more than NASA did back in the 60s?
Japan is now staking a claim to the moon with a lunar orbiter that now orbits the Helium 3 and future space exploration platform. China plans to launch its own moon probe before the end of the year, followed by India in the first half of 2008.
Bush wants to go back to the moon in 2020. And he wants to go to Mars in 2037. What an ambitious project, Mr. President. Maybe the Chinese will be nice enough to allow our astronauts into their moon base/mining operation.
Of course, I'm not suggesting we divert funds from education or healthcare or social security or any other important social program to space exploration. I'm merely pointing out that the U.S. has spent nearly four times as much on two seemingly pointless wars as we did on every NASA space program leading up to and including the Apollo program which landed a man on the moon. Just imagine where we would be today if even a fraction of that had been allocated for our space program.
In all seriousness, we, as a species, ultimately need to get off this planet – and sooner rather than later. If wars or global warming or complete natural resource depletion don't kill us, overpopulation certainly will. We need to get into space and learn the hard lessons humankind will invariably have to learn to continue as a species. I'm not a person of faith but I believe that any God that would have gone to the trouble to create us would agree.