Taking our baby steps to the stars

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 — NASA announced plans on Monday for a permanent base on the Moon, to be started soon after astronauts return there around 2020.

The agency’s deputy administrator, Shana Dale, said the United States would develop rockets and spacecraft to get people to the Moon and establish a rudimentary base. There, other countries and commercial enterprises could expand the outpost to develop scientific and other interests, Ms. Dale said.

Ms. Dale and other officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the agency envisioned a base at one of the lunar poles, to take advantage of the near-constant sunlight for solar power generation. It would have an “open architecture” design to which others could add the capabilities they want.

Scott Horowitz, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration, said crews of four astronauts would make weeklong missions to the Moon starting around 2020.

I see that much is being made on talk radio and in the blogs about the fact that the return to the moon is going to take much longer than the original program which got us there in the first place.

The reason for that is simple. This time we are going there to stay and to accomplish something besides walking about and taking pictures (and leaving a few packages of scientific instruments almost as an afterthought). JFK's bold "we choose to go to the moon in this decade" was little more than a stunt to showcase American superiority over the Soviet Union. It worked and had the unintended side effect of advancing technology and returning a butt-load of money back into the economy.

The commercial development of the solar system will unlock wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, but getting there and building the infrastructure is going to be so expensive and risky that governments will have to be the ones to take the first steps.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is an exellent chance that none of this will happen. Plans made by government agencies for decades in the future are never written in stone. When the government finds that it needs billions of dollars to provide the social services of its new Mexican-American constituants things like space exploration and development will get bled white in a hurry.

Still it will be nice to dream about what might have been while we wile away the long hours in the trenches as we fight to keep the Army of The People's Republic of Aztlan from breaking through the Mississippi River defense line.