When it comes to U.S. colonies on the moon ...

In some fantasy land, I'd love to have bases (American or otherwise) on the moon.

The real question is, do I think a permanent moonbase is feasible given current technology, not to mention our cultural and political states?

To that, the answer is a sorrowful but resounding "no".

It's highly questionable whether we would be able to build and maintain such a base even under ideal conditions. Our culture is absurdly risk averse, so we'd need to pull it off without a single death, which makes it even more unlikely. And given recent history, I doubt either party would be willing to spend the money, even if success were guaranteed (Newt Gingrich's pandering to Floridians not withstanding).

This would be very useful as a staging ground. Communication times between the moon & earth are short, and travel time could be relatively short based on the actual space travel industry that emerges. This means that it can be done a lot more experimentally and interactively than doing completely prepared long-distance shots through the solar system.

Once we get established on the moon, then we can know how to better bootstrap farther-out bases.

You wish.

When I was a kid, "America" was THE place to go to in everyone's dreams.
30 years later, I would only travel there if forced with a gun to my head. It's sad, really, to see its appeal drop from wow to meh.
To me, from a desirability POV, USA was long ago replaced by NZ and AU.

I've read it a couple of times. You seem to have missed that.

By the way, what's wrong with a fiercely libertarian independent lunar colony?

Cheers,
Dave

See what you did up there?
You somehow managed to blame immigrants on USA's fall.

Just... please correct me if I'm wrong, but USA has been made of immigrants from day 1. OK, they were called colonists because the natives had no word for "immigrants".
No, I'd say the country went south because, starting '90s, it had no more sizable enemies to struggle against. Just like a sportsman quitting sports, it got lazy and fat and lost its will to push forward. At the same time, emerging countries pushed forward.

Time shall tell what's going to happen.

Why does it have to be a US colony? There are plenty of other countries (with healthier economies) who'd be willing to contribute resources to such a mission if had partial ownership of the result.

At least you get something for the tax money.

Creating a colony on the moon requires a lot of technology development and that will be useful in the long run. Remember that the Apollo program was the seed for major advances in computers and also in materials used in healthcare.

Rule #1 in computing: always have a backup copy of anything remotely important.

I'm pretty sure the human race is a pretty important thing. There's hundreds of different things that could render the Earth uninhabitable at a moment's notice, from asteroid impacts to supervolcanoes, and that's not even taking into account what we're doing, or could do, to destroy the planet on our own - global warming, nuclear war...

Put a self-sustaining colony on some other planet or moon, big enough that it can survive for several generations without Earth. That way, no matter what happens on Earth, we've got a backup copy of Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

Where's the "I'm in favor of a colony but only as an international expedition" option?

I'd love for their to be a colony on the moon. I just wouldn't want the United States hogging all of the glory and possibly putting weapons or something of the like up there.

Well, first, there are advantages to having the first long-term habitat be close by. You might want to build habitats "farther out in the solar system" after you've worked the details out in a place where you can send repair parts in three days instead of three hundred. You can work out a lot of the life support and resource extraction details that can be used anywhere. It's a first step, not an only step.

Second, turns out that the moon really hasn't been "studied to death." The Apollo (and Luna) landings were on a very restricted subset of the moon's surface, parts that were moderately flat, relatively near the equator, and on the Earth-facing side. Turns out that there are parts of the moon that are vastly different than what we've seen.

We manage to do just fine in Antarctica. We can all share that; why can't we all share the moon?

At least you get something for the tax money

You don't decide that for me. Benefit is, by definition, something that can only be decided by a (supposed) beneficiary.

As for me, my relationship with government is a net loss. (For reference I make $35k a year.) Your relationship with government may be a net gain (as decided by you), but again, you do NOT speak for me or anyone but yourself.

Then pay for your own damned moon base and stop insisting that the US simultaneously foot the bill and get badmouthed for being able to.

That's because there's no oil there, and it sucks being there. Watch what happens when Antarctica stops being an ice-bound hell-hole, and when people start finding all kinds of useful resources there.

The issue with the ``we will benefit through spinoff technology`` argument is cost. When 95% of the cost of a moon colony goes into materials, technology, etc that is not applicable to earth it is a waste of money. I would prefer that 10% of the budget goes into research on technology that can be applied to terrestrial issues. Do that and we would be twice as far ahead with 10% of the money.
Right now, and for the forseeable future, we have bigger issues to deal with; wars, famine, health care, aging population, money crisis, etc. These issues need to be dealt with first before we spend money on luxuries such as a moon base.
This is not like the explorers on earth. We already know what is there and there is no way of economically bringing back resources that we don`t already have. The explores went out to find resources and trade routes; we don`t need anything from the moon.

You don't decide that for me. Benefit is, by definition, something that can only be decided by a (supposed) beneficiary.

No, I see nothing in the definition of benefit that requires the recipient to to be grateful or agree to the benefit. The whole concept of taxation, for good or ill, is that someone other than the taxee decides how best to spend some of his money. If you decide how to spend your own money for your own benefit that's simply a free economy. Taxes can and should be spent to the benefit of the population. Everyone receives the benefits of properly spent taxes whether they appreciate those benefits of not. Just try and find a country with low taxes that isn't a hell-hole with no infrastructure and crime and corruption running rampant.

Speaking for myself, I feel anyone in the lower tax brackets (such as $35K/year) is getting basically a free ride. The top 10% earners pay 70% of the income taxes. So I have no sympathy for someone who says their measly couple thousand in taxes wasn't repaid in all the government benefits they received such as road systems, emergency services, police and military protection, education system, and all the rest. The people complaining about the government not doing enough for them are invariably paying the least taxes.

How many manned flights has the EU launched into space? Zero. For a union that has 64% larger population than the US, just as much technology, and arguably better manufacturing capacity (where are all the biggest cruise ships built? which country is #2 for exports? (Germany)), that's not so great.

Singapore have an interesting attitude to maintaining law and order.

also, they have always been a major trade centre due to their location.

considering their small size, and high commercial importance, it's easy to see how they don't really need much from tax on the populace - it can mostly come from business.

look at the difference in area between the USA and Singapore (or Switzerland, if you want to play that). how much road do they need to maintain? how much power to transmit? how large a population?

there's a lot at play. you can't just cherry pick a country.

Love your comment, but careful what you suggest! If we remove the shackles from the defense industry, then they'll start selling weapons to the terrorists and then sell us guns to protect ourselves from the terrorists. It's the perfect racket. You can sort of see it in action along the US-Mexico border. American-made weapons (serious ones like assault rifles and grenade launchers and stuff) are sold to drug cartels and then the DEA and law enforcement groups have to upgrade *their* weaponry. A arms race is de facto in effect in the southern US/northern Mexico.

Only in pure, abstract theory. Counterexample: The mentally ill.

That depends on what you figure in. Once you consider not just taxes and benefits, but also the fact that pretty much everything you do every day depends on the government, it starts to shift.

Go shopping? Money provided by the government, legal framework for selling and buying stuff provided by government. Driving there? Roads courtesy of your government. Traffic laws that give you an excellent chance of arriving alive also. Not having to live in a bunker armed to the teeth? Thank the government for providing a reasonable (though not perfect) amount of internal security. Your probably went to a public school, and horrible as it probably was, it's your tax dollars at work. Not having to pay for some kind of private fire department insurance in case your house catches fire? Government again. Oh, and even if the fire department were privatized, the contract law that your insurance would be built on would be a government benefit.

Unless you are a redneck survival nut and would much rather live in a cave and hunt mammuts, government is definitely a net benefit.

I'm guessing from the anti-ATF slant of your post that you are a knee-jerk conservative so I doubt any sources or "facts" will convince you, but I'll post what I have anyway. This article [latimes.com] from the LA times website refers to at least one grenade launcher. This report [senate.gov] from the US Senate describes how Mexican federal police found "three anti-aircraft guns, dozens of grenades, a grenade launcher, AK-47s, several makes of machine guns and more than 26,000 ammunition cartridges" in a home gym in Juarez. Is the grenade launcher American-made? I honestly can't say. But the thousands of grenades mentioned in this article [washingtonpost.com] apparently are. That the grenades were not given directly to the cartels is kind of a moot point. The cartels have them and we made them. The second report does go into great detail about how most of weapons going into Mexico are either American-made or imported to the US and then delivered to Mexico. I also forgot to include land mines and bazookas.

If you're trying to suggest that Mexican drug cartels don't get most of their arms from the US or that these arms are not killing thousands of people, you are just wrong. If you're picking nits to say that the grenade launchers *might not be American-made* then that's a red herring and you are missing the point. Both Mexico and the United States agree that weapons are flowing from the United States to Mexican drug cartels. From December 2006 through May 2011, over 30,000 people were killed by organized crime in Mexico. If you've ever been through El Paso, you know that this violence is creeping over the border back into the US.

If you're trying to suggest that arms manufacturers and dealers would abstain from selling to criminals are disreputable middle men without government regulations preventing them from doing so, you are out of your mind.