NASA just crashed a bus-size projectile into the moon looking for water. The mission is a result of earlier findings that water molecules exist on the surface of the moon. The moon still remains dryer that any desert on Earth and may contain about 32 ounces of water over the entire surface. This amount of water isn't enough to support a lunar base without importing heavy, expensive water from Earth, so what's behind this flurry of activity from NASA?
The figure above displays forecasts from one of my time series models of the US economy. The model forecasts the Federal R&D budgets for Space (FED.RD.SPACE.) and Energy (FED.RD.ENERGY.). Although there was a drop in Federal expenditure for Space R&D, the forecast is for continuing growth after 2010. Federal expenditure for Energy R&D, on the other hand, has been declining since the mid-1990's.
Something is wrong with this picture and other commentators have noticed. Space exploration has produced few scientific advances that could not have been achieved without manned space flight. From an economic perspective, manned space flight makes little sense. Let's redirect Federal R&D toward Energy, resist NASA's space spectaculars, and leave space flight to the super-rich who want to travel with Virgin Galactic.
now that we've added crash landings to the NASA repertoire(or do I mean NASCAR), we better make sure there are no astronauts around, or cosmonauths either. I dream of a day when there are a dozen Hubbard space telespcopes beaming data back to scientists around the world(Earth that is). Gordon Ridley
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