Life support requirements to send humans to other planets where the journey is 2 years is a completely different class of problem than going to the moon for a week or two (or even a month). A trip to a near-Earth asteroid would spur the technology needed to pursue trips to Mars (and beyond). A trip to the moon would at most make people realize that with the current risk aversion that we can't do it without spending the US's GDP.
"That is not the real point of going there. What the human eye and mind can percieve, even now, is much more than what we can engineer. With your logic, what’s the point in going to a ball game or climbing a mountain or going somewhere on vacation? You can always watch it on TV or see it in books."
I understand completely the reason we send people there, but Sam has a terrific point. We are so risk averse now, that what we successfully pulled off on Apollo is impossible. I haven't looked up his stats, but if 90% is devoted towards keeping a human body alive on the Apollo system, then new systems will be 99.997%.
I posit that before we go anywhere, we should clutter it up with small but useful robotic spacecraft that allows us to reduce risk prior to arrival and allows future astronauts to just focus on the climbing a mountain on the moon to see what's there. We can send 100 robotic missions for the projected development cost of the lunar mission.
Probably what bother's me most about your sentiment is this:
"What the human eye and mind can percieve, even now, is much more than what we can engineer. "
If that is the case, then all we have is the person who went there and his faulty memory. We have no permanent record, nothing to pass to future generations other than the knowledge that the person landed on the moon. Throwing a person into space for the advancement of all mankind is like saying that Bill Gates getting rich from MS is the betterment of all people. We've past the point that the accomplishment is a point of national pride, or people would actually watch Shuttle launches on a regular basis. Everything since then is all just fluff that furthers single individuals and fools others into believing that they are important because they are working on an important national goal. We passed that point by Apollo 13.
"That is not the real point of going there. What the human eye and mind can percieve, even now, is much more than what we can engineer. With your logic, what’s the point in going to a ball game or climbing a mountain or going somewhere on vacation? You can always watch it on TV or see it in books."
I understand completely the reason we send people there, but Sam has a terrific point. We are so risk averse now, that what we successfully pulled off on Apollo is impossible. I haven't looked up his stats, but if 90% is devoted towards keeping a human body alive on the Apollo system, then new systems will be 99.997%.
I posit that before we go anywhere, we should clutter it up with small but useful robotic spacecraft that allows us to reduce risk prior to arrival and allows future astronauts to just focus on the climbing a mountain on the moon to see what's there. We can send 100 robotic missions for the projected development cost of the lunar mission.
Probably what bother's me most about your sentiment is this:
"What the human eye and mind can percieve, even now, is much more than what we can engineer. "
If that is the case, then all we have is the person who went there and his faulty memory. We have no permanent record, nothing to pass to future generations other than the knowledge that the person landed on the moon. Throwing a person into space for the advancement of all mankind is like saying that Bill Gates getting rich from MS is the betterment of all people. We've past the point that the accomplishment is a point of national pride, or people would actually watch Shuttle launches on a regular basis. Everything since then is all just fluff that furthers single individuals and fools others into believing that they are important because they are working on an important national goal. We passed that point by Apollo 13.