Obama eliminates NASA's funds for manned lunar missions

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by manasecret

I'm not sure how you think space tourism and shortened international flights equate to what NASA does.

And like I said, I'm all for private space industry, but I hardly think a private industry based only on doing things that make money can replace the service NASA does. There has been nothing stopping private industry from doing what NASA has done since NASA's inception over half a century ago, and they're only now developing space vehicles? And you think NASA has done squat for the past thirty years??? I hardly want to rely solely on the private industry to replace NASA's manned flights at this point. Maybe after it develops further, but not now.

As promised: 1972.

Also, I think you're overstating the importance of manned spaceflight in the wide array of study NASA does. In economic terms, it seems to me that it is an enormous cost and risk for minimal return on investment. Most of the major discoveries I can think of in the recent past have been from unmanned exploration, which have less cost and risk, and I think NASA does very well. But I am no scientist. If you could list the discoveries that depended on manned spaceflight I could very easily be swayed. Data collection doesn't count as a compuetr could easily accomplish it.