[MrIcky]

Originally Posted by PQ

All those you named were for OUR use. And ALL were either readily available or a direct result of free enterprise. I sure could use a car, a phone, an air conditioner and computer, but somehow I'm missing the part where moon rocks and moon water are helpful to us. We got bigger problems right now.

Those would have been developed anyway. And by PRIVATE companies.

LOL it's like you want to fight. You say in one sentence to show you something invented with your tax dollars, then someone shows you something and you say private companies would have invented it. It's circular logic and this kind of logic makes it impossible to have a real conversation.

Moon Rocks

"The moon’s surface is full of the energy source helium-3, said Gerald Kulcinski, a nuclear engineering professor and director of the Fusion Technology Institute at UW.
“If we could land the space shuttle on the moon, fill the cargo with canisters of helium-3 mined from the surface and bring the shuttle back to Earth, that cargo would supply the entire electrical power needs of the United States for an entire year,” he said."


Here are a few other things that have been invented though because of the space program:

A system that allows doctors to monitor the hearts of outpatients and locate patients if cardiac emergencies develop.
A method for measuring blood glucose without a needle.
Computational techniques to help physicians instruct osteoporosis patients on avoiding the risk of bone fracture.
A device for early detection of cataracts, diabetes, Alzheimer's and other diseases that will allow doctors to test new treatments.
A portable, wireless device that meets the growing demand for monitoring patients with various conditions outside the clinical setting.
A method of cleaning contaminants from surgical implants that will reduce the number of infections and limit soreness and swelling

Now you can say private industry WOULD invent those, but they didn't.

Another site:
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/shuttle.htm


Or here's some very practical medical info:

Every year tens of thousands of people suffer knee injuries as a result of over-strenuous exercise or sports accidents. The ideal cure would be to replace the defective cartilage with new material, having the same properties as human tissue, that is readily accepted by the immune system.
Unfortunately, scientists are not yet able to produce artificial cartilage for implantation, as under the influence of Earth's gravity human cells grow flat, like a pancake, rather than in the form of a sugar lump from which the right shape can be modelled. With the benefit of weightlessness, on the other hand, the necessary growth in all three directions might be achievable.

And that is exactly what scientists from Switzerland, Italy and Germany are trying to test in an experiment to be carried out on the International Space Station. Using a bioreactor, a device commonly used in laboratories on Earth but specially adapted for use in space, the team wants to investigate the factors that make human cells grow in three dimensions.

Then there's the inevitable reasons to be in space. I'd rather be the top country in space research then the bottom country. And water on the moon means you can fuel ships on the moon. And if we aren't there first, we might as well be last. Controlling space IS the next frontier for the military.:

"Just last week, the Chinese air force chief officer called military competition in space "inevitable." For those who thought this was just idle saber-rattling, take a look at what the American Air Force is cooking up this morning: a $50 million bid for better interplanetary weather forecasts, "battlespace surveillance" in space environments and inertial sensors for navigation, presumably in situations where the standard compass isn't effective."
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Or here's some other energy news:

And the Moon would be more efficient to pull solar energy from because of the lack of atmosphere- there are tests being performed right now to power large lasers on the moon which fire onto a photovoltaic supercell on the Earth. The solar cells on the moon would me more effective by factors of 10s to100s because they can use the full solar spectrum.

I'm not going to be insulting to anyone, I just think there's a lot of practical aspects that aren't being thought through- and if for no other reason than having a presence in space then we need to be there.

Then there's the esoteric- we haven't even explored a 1000th of a pixel in the following map:



Who knows what all we'll find as we increase our exploration.