Featured Provide me a one single benefit of going on moon ?

I see no need to go there again.
Big waste'o money.

 

If we are not moving forward, then we are dying...oh, and Tang.

 

Development of new technology and pushing more engineering boundaries.
Exploration and scientific discovery.

Knowledge is its own reward.

 

Six-Seven times was too much.

Hey Welcome Back Chinu

 

Excellent. We can bring more here in case we run out before we've finished making the planet uninhabitable with our current supplies.

 

It would be useful from a strategic point of view. Earth's defenses are quite weak. A moon base could be helpful, armed with phasers and photon torpedoes. We're woefully unprepared in the event of an alien invasion, so we need to get cracking.

 

I kind of thought the Canadians would put the chicken cannon up there.

 

We gain far more knowledge with remote sensing & unmanned probes.
As for the moon.....we've been there & done that.

 

Wich we have been sending into space as well.
But probes can't do everything. Nore do probes require the same kind of technology.

For example, probes don't need air pressure regulators, zero-gravity toilets, comfy and safe spacesuits and what-not.
That too, is part of pushing engineer boundaries and further perfecting already existing technologies.

If we ever hope to create a colony thingy on Mars, we're going to need stuff like that.
In fact, if we can't even make routine trips to the moon and back.... then Mars is not going to happen any time soon.

And it still costs a buttload of money. There is still no space station on the Moon. Or anywhere else that isn't just orbitting the earth, for that matter.

There is a buttload to learn still.

And technology on earth is only going to benefit from it.
It always has.

Or did you think we've learned everything there is to know from the handfull of trips take there over the last 4 decades?

 

Technology spinoffs

 

Bang for the buck:
Remote sensing & unmanned probes give us so much more, eg, identifying
potentially life bearing planets outside our solar system, exploring the universe.
Going to the moon offers learning more about its geology. Meh....

Colonizing Mars:
This isn't even remotely practical for the foreseeable future.
Why, you ask?
Travel there is so dangerous (radiation from years spent in space) & so expensive.
The cost is ginormous. Re-supply of anyone there is difficult & spendy.
We could learn more about Mars's geology, but...meh.....
Before even considering that, we need much cheaper & more reliable methods
of putting payloads in space.

The future:
Telepresence is the way. Man isn't getting any technological upgrades to make
use more productive or durable. But AI is rapidly advancing, with machines
becoming more & more capable of independently doing tasks formerly reserved
for humans. That's where the exciting & productive research lies.
And they won't need advances in space travel related medicine, food, water,
oxygen, zero gravity toilets, or the huge overhead of a return trip to Earth.
Sure, sure...space travel is fun for the very few people who actually do it.
But the other 99.9999999% of the population experiences it remotely, no
matter whether a human or a robot sets foot on Mars.

The only reason to send people to Mars is drama.
And that isn't good enuf for me.

 

We get potential technology spinoffs from other approaches to space exploration.
But it makes no sense to do something because of serendipitous & ancillary rather
than primary benefits.

I liked the Apollo program. It yielded much.
It was worth doing once....just once.
We have more opportunities today than in the 60s.

We're getting more using less these days.
Unmanned explorers in space.....
Kepler
Voyager
WMAP
Chandra X-ray telescope
Pioneer
Spitzer
Hubble
Spirit & Opportunity
Cassini-Huygens
Viking

Earth bound telescopes....
Keck 1 & 2
ALMA
GTC
Arecibo
GMT
And my current favorite.....LIGO
(Think of it as a quasi-telescope which looks at gravity waves instead of electromagnetic waves.)

As for manned missions, I give the ISS high marks for making the technology
of keeping humans in space humdrum. If ever we do go to visit mars, this is
a necessary first step. But we're a long way off from understanding how to keep
humans safe, healthy & productive in prolonged conditions of remote isolation,
confinement & weightlessness.