See, here's where I have a problem with it. All that money was spent, several lives were lost, huge risks were taken, lots of veryusual spin-off tech was created, the world's view of space and human capability was changed forever, and then we did nothing? What happened to space colonies and the first man on Mars by the end of the seventies? Worse yet, there's a need for a human footprint in space.
As far as we know, we're the only life in the galaxy, maybe the only life in the universe. One plague, one asteroid, one massive ecological disaster, one climate shit, one war with the right (or very wrong) weapons, and we could very well die off-- which would leave the universe without life. If we're all there is, then the ecological mindset means we have to protect ourselves as much as we try to protect our ecologies, and it's not that big a leap, really. We move animals around to open up genepools, we preserve areas and breed species to re-release, so why can't we build safety nets for ourselves throughout the solar system? If something happens to the Earth, if humanity is wiped out here or the world is rendered unlivable, then we can survive on the moon, on Mars, on the moons of Jupter and in the Asteroid belt, on Titan and in orbit and in the spaces between planets were we can spread out.
Even more pressing, there will soon be more people than we can make food for, more than there is space for, and more than there is water for-- and space opens up that constraint, too. Space is called space because there's space. It'd be almost impossible to overpopulate the openness of other worlds, of colonies in orbit. We could build arcs and preserve species and ecosystems as well as people, we could manufacture as much water as we need from the raw ingredients of the cosmos, we could grow food for everyone. As the world gets too full, people can move to the moon and on to other homes, founding new colonies, new cultures, adding to our diversity and our chance of survival, bringing life to the universe and greening up what's currently, as far as we know, kind of a collection of pretty dead rocks. If there's no other life out there, who's going to complain? If there is, we can share information with them if they're sentient, increasing our knowledge and worth that way, building the next sort of human culture in tandem with a galactic community, and if they're not sentient, we can study them, understand the universe and leave them alone to become what they need to become.
So why did we leave the moon alone? Why did we let the governement and the world tell us it wasn't important anymore? Because now, as things look more and more dire, it is important, and we should have had that release valve up and running thirty years ago, that safety net in place and waiting a whole generation before now.
So today, on Moon Landing Day, think about the future of the human race: isn't it better to spread out as we always have, then to burn up or starve as we seem to think is the way to go now?
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