Futuof Space Colonization (And why do we always keep going into politics and economics?)

--- Free Trader wrote:
> Key words: "could have". Lots of things COULD have
> happened, but being close only counts in horse shoes.

Yes there are a lot of things that could have happened. An infinite number in
fact. Being close does in fact count because it means that they could keep up
pretty well. Sure they lost the race to the moon to the yanks but they did
still show that they were capable of doing it.

> Point is they didn't, nor did the USSR even attempt to
> land a manned mission on the Moon after the success of
> the Apollo program. What is the propaganda value in
> being second? Then again, I still find myself asking
> what the point was in going at all if we weren't going
> to STAY? :(

We did get quite a bit of science from the moon. Not as much as we should have
since only 12 people landed there and only one of them was a scientist but the
amount of knowledge we collected was definatenly more then worth the price tag.

> I hope that China not only goes to the moon, but
> establishes a permanent base there and then pushes on
> to Mars. Maybe that will get the U.S. looking at
> manned missions beyond LEO again.

Another space race could be useful. But this time building colonies instead of
planting flags. Might actually cause a stanford torus to be built.