Quote:
Originally Posted by bojan
The moment they figure out the treaty is in the way of their business, "they" will pronounce it invalid. Or "they" will will find the ways how to circumvent it ("scientific mining"? why not?)
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Sounds like a new age of Imperialism. I admit to not liking the fact that we will 'rape' Mars in the same fashion as we did to our own planet, but, there has to be SOMETHING to get people wanting to go. And by people, I mean politicians and the private business who can afford to fund it.
If it was upto scientists and idealist types (I think that would be 95%+ of members here!) then we would never go. Money does make the world go around and I think most politicians would view science as a waste of time. Not all science of course. But Astronomy isn't something that will cure cancer or feed millions. While the technology created as a result of Apollo would have made a big difference to peoples everyday lives, no one would see that except the educated few. The masses would see the lives lost, the scandals, the massive amount of money spent and for what? Human exploration and some rocks. To me, that is worth it and we should continue to push ourselves, but for a politician who is more concerned about wars, domestic issues and re-election, scientific endeavours would seem trivial. They would do some sort of nice speech every now and then. Give NASA/ESA a token amount of funds to make it appear that they are interested and then get back to the real work.
Apollo was partially so successful because the US was trying to beat the Russians. What happened after the victory in beating Russia and then Apollo 13? People quickly got bored and those final 3 missions were cancelled. Sure, the Japanese and Chinese are getting into the game big time, and it might be that once the Chinese have someone on the Moon, US citizens will begin demanding that they not fall behind in a domain that they would consider theirs. Once that occurs, perhaps the US will kick into a higher gear and A) get back to the Moon and then B) begin having a permanent presence there.
</rant> lol