Do you think this has anything to do with China? Or is it just because Texas is home of NASA, and Bush wants to send a few billions of dollars worth of love back to his home state?

The surface of Venus is also hot enough to melt lead.

I''ll settle for Mars and an electric blanket, thank you.

That''s almost Miss Norway hot!

What a shame, about all that money we''re spending on expanding human knowledge, and seeking the pointless rewards of discovery and exploration when we could be doing something really important like subsidizing polluting industries and building broken missle defense shields!

And there''s your Controversy part of the conversation!

It just wouldn''t be a Politics and Controversy thread without an inflammatory statement.

Thanks Elysium!

I was waiting for someone to insert it....uh...the comment I mean....no seriously!

I''m voting for both. And if it helps get NASA back on track and brings as many scientific improvements as the Apollo missions did, I''m all for it.

Isn''t it all about the velcro?

And about the noble part, I guess i''d rather watch ""The Right Stuff"" than a movie about blowing up missles in flight (except x-men 2...). That may seem like a stupid reason, but really there''s more of us folks who get teary eyed about landing on the moon than about blowing up ICBMs.

I love the story Ray Bradbury told about how he used to tell people ""we''ll land on the moon within our lifetime."" and how he carefully and patiently collected the name, address and phone number of whoever called him a fool. He called every last one of them sometime in 1969...

Yeah, I''ll believe it when I see it.

And where is he going to get this money from IF he does do it? Oh, right, he''ll just borrow more and let the people that come after him worry about paying it back or looking like the bad guy because of the cuts they''ll have to make!

Interesting how that policy doesn''t seem to extend to people like me. If I want to buy a mere $100k house (the average price of a middle-class home in my area), it''s like pulling teeth to get a decent mortgage, even though that''s chump change in terms of my ability to pay it off over the next 20-30 years.

But it''s no problem to have trillions in debt for the government.

I don''t mind having a system that works on that policy, but it just seems unfair to make it so tough on the nation''s citizens to have decent financing since the government wouldn''t exist without us.

And no, I''m not ridiculously in debt like so much of our population; I have student loans like most everybody else, my car is almost paid off, and I only have about $1k in credit card debt due to my period of unemployment about a year ago (It was close to $2k initially, but I''ve since paid off half, while simultaneously rebuilding my savings).

So I wouldn''t say I''m much of a risky investment for a bank, I just can''t afford a big down payment on a home yet, which seems to be a problem for them despite my history of good faith on paying back debts and loans.

Anyway, that''s a digression. The topic of going back to the moon? I think it''s a wise and important investment; our space program has been stagnant for far too long. We need to begin developing a presence beyond just our planet, both for colonization/expansion and for acquiring more resources before we strip our planet dry.

It''s only a matter of time before the human race is going to outgrow earth, and we''d be better off being ready before that time arrives if at all possible. Space technology is probably one of the most important investments we can make in our future.

Farscry, a couple of things:

1) if you have good credit and a household salary of half the value of your home, there is no reason you can''t get a mortgage, even putting little down. If you do not have any down payment or good credit, what does that have to do with the US debt?

2) The idea that colonization of space will alleviate population pressures, even if those pressures existed, is silly. Consider the cost in resources and energy it takes to send people out into space. It is technologically and logistically impossible to send and signifigant portion of the entire population off the planet. It takes hundreds of people to send seven up - the percentages just don''t work.

Sending people to colonize the Sun might alleviate population pressure. Just tell them to land at night.

Seriously though there could be some uses for the Moon aside from another place to store people. I have mentioned this idea before, but I didn''t show a link.

It would be a hell of a jump on technology. Today it takes hundreds of people to handle a space mission (and that''s just mission control - it''s really thousands if you include the people involved in developing, building, and maintaining facilities and craft). Is is possible that someday it will take the same number of people to build a spaceship as plan to fly it? Maybe. But it would be the first transportation technology in human history to do so (think about ships, trains, cars, planes). The more complex the technology, the greater the ratio of support (designers, manufacturers, maintenance) to passengers. And space travel technology is the most complex form of transportation so far. The ratios needed to send a signifigant portion of the population into space are almost impossible to achieve.

But my main issue was that you are talking about using space travel to alleviate populaton by colonization. Here, the problem isn''t just that it is contrary to how space travel works, but also that it is contrary to howcolonizationworks. As a percentage of population, colonizers are statistically insignifigant. very few people are ever going to take part, by choice, in taking their lives and families to a new land. And forced colonization won''t happen; it can''t be done at gunpoint - again, the ratios don''t work.

Space colonies may come about, but they also may not - just because you can create worm holes that ships can pass through in the movies doesn''t mean that there is a real-life equivalent. We may find that the only planets we can reach in thousands of years of travel are no more habitable than Mars or Venus.

Take all that into account, and you realize that if we do find planets to populate, this will help us expand our population, but it will never actually alleviate population pressures here.

Ironically, our population issues here are self correcting. The nations which use the greatest amounts of resources all have dwindling populations, as the birth rates have dropped below the death rates. Food, water, and energy are abundant, and we could support many, many times the number of people as are currently on the planet easily - even as the growth of that number is slowing.

I guess I disagree with both points. The government is borrowing well within it''s means. As a percentage of both government spending and GDP, these deficits aren''t that big of a deal - and it isn''t as if the US government isn''t going to be around and growing to pay them off. And as I said before, there may be reasons why you personally are having trouble borrowing (didn''t save up for a down payment, didn''t establish good credit), but the average person with a very minimal amount of income and responsibility can borrow for whatever they need. More people own houses than ever before, and anyone with a pulse can get a credit card. Maybe you should shop around more for a mortgage, tighten the belt and save up before buying, or wait until whatever mistakes you have made in your credit history have passed.

You can actually say with a straight face that Apollo has brought very little return? Please read this. That''s just Apollo.

Also, comparing Missle Defense budgets to NASA is laughable, the DoD spends more on toilets than NASA''s operating budget.

I''d also like to see where the missle defense shields, not just missle defense, has had successes in the field. If you could provide a link.

Frankly, I''d be more enthusiastic about this if we didn''t get into that 400 billion dollar plus entitlement program.

If you read these leaks, it says that the moon mission wouldn''t launch for another fifteen years, well after Bush''s term in office expires either way. So, if structured right, the costs for this program can be dumped on Bush''s successor. It''s en vogue in Washington to put everything off long enough to screw over the next guy, after all.