I understand that we should not do space exploration at all because there are hungry mouths to feed on Earth. We can do space as soon as we eliminate all hunger and poverty in all nations. I learnt this back when Jimmy Carter was setting the pace.
Right?
That's not what I said.
I said MARS is a waste of time and effort at our current level of technology.
The MOON is where we should be. It's America's moon and we should have been exploiting it to the utmost. The place has something we flatly cannot establish on earth, vast quantities of almost perfect vacuum. It has no biosphere, pollution is not a valid consideration.
It has metalllic ores, it has water, it has He3.
It has solar power beyond belief. It's an industrialist's dream world.
AND...if our enemies got uppity, we could drop very inexpensive rocks on their heads without concern for radioactive fallout....
Screw the starving on the Earth. Time for them to get off their begging knees and get their lazy asses to work. Maybe they should petition for better governments in those s-hole countries they live in, hmmmm?
The US has wasted more than 50 years ignoring it's moon. Way past time to correct that oversight.
Let's put this another way, to paraphrase something from C.M. Kornbluth's "Takeoff":
"Once a country has the first domed base on the moon, no other country can establish one because the people in the first base can go over to the other guy's dome and stick pins in it."
Ya think CHINA is going to let America retake the moon China steals from us? They're not even going to let us ever get our White House back that they stole.