Space: A colony on the moon?

“Are lunar settlements a good idea?” asked Nathan Pippenger in New​Republic.com. While campaigning in Florida last week, Republican candidate Newt Gingrich pledged that by 2020, if he’s elected president, “we will have the first permanent base on the moon.” Some critics rushed to accuse Gingrich of trying to buy the votes of people along Florida’s Space Coast, which has been hit hard by the shrinking of the U.S. space program. Others charged him with simple nuttiness. But many space-program enthusiasts say the notion of a lunar outpost “isn’t total nonsense.” A moon base would provide “numerous scientific and commercial benefits,” as well as insurance against Armageddon. On the moon, we might build a launchpad from which to fire missiles at asteroids and comets on a collision course with Earth; a colony there would also give our species a chance at survival should some calamity wipe out life on the home planet.

“Earth to Newt: Phone home,” said Charles Blow in The New York Times. Gingrich presumably thought he’d win votes by pandering to aerospace workers, but “the last thing that people who can’t hold on to their jobs and houses here on Earth want to hear about is a colony on the moon.” Spending hundreds of billions on manned space flight would be an absurd waste of money, said David Frum in CNN.com. The moon missions of the 1960s were the product of Cold War competition between the U.S. and Russia, but today, NASA’s robotic missions are exploring Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter in exquisite detail—at a fraction of the cost of manned spaceflight. To propose manned missions to the moon—and a colony populated by thousands of people—“is not a vision of the future. It’s nostalgia.”

What a small-minded view, said Ed West in Telegraph.co.uk. By encouraging us to turn outward, to the infinite possibilities beyond our atmosphere, manned space exploration has “the power to unite humanity like nothing else.” When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, “it was a genuine, species-wide event.” No one is suggesting ignoring the problems here on Earth, said E.D. Kain in TheAtlantic.com. But “is it really such a terrible thing to think big” as well? With resources running out on this increasingly crowded planet, many of us are becoming convinced of the practical necessity of establishing colonies on the moon and Mars. “The future of mankind” may depend on it.

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