http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60BjkUtqxPE

@Jamiet, are you sure you aren't thinking of our 9/11 truther?

Whenever life brings me down, I remember that some American guys landed on the Moon and I feel better.

Is their nationality crucial to you? Or is it more that humans have made it to the moon?

Is their species crucial to you? Or is it more that living beings have made it to the Moon?

The shameful thing is that we aren't still there.

The species is irrelevant - we are the only species that has the capacity (currently, at least) to 'make it' to the moon. I am happy that we have managed to do this, irrelevant of national identity. Marking the national identity of those that made it to the moon is as pointless to me as it would be to mark their ethnic identity, their gender, sexual orientation, or hair colour.

Straight white Anglo-Saxon males, if I'm not mistaken. I wouldn't know about hair color.

Exactly. It's irrelevant. At least to me.

Anyway, I answered your question. You didn't answer mine. Is it important to you that they were American? I'm interested, I'm not picking at you.

The 9/11 truther was Darwin, and to a limited degree fasces349.

And while they haven't made it to the moon, dogs and monkeys in space helped our understanding of how to do it pretty well.

Sargmacher, discussions with you aren't my idea of fun. Stay well, fellow Earthling.

What makes you say that?

" I still think it's probably the coolest and most scientifically and culturally significant accomplishment in American history."

Don't you mean world history

Sarg, it is sort of important to me. It is a point of national pride. What is your nationality? Are you not proud to be a/an_____________?

It's important to me that they were American because I'm from America and I'm proud that our country did such an amazing thing for the human race, however the most important bit is that human beings left this planet for the moon at all. If the Soviets had gone, yes it may have had some impact negatively on me geopolitically, but I would still be in awe.

In that same vein I wish China the best of luck in their efforts in space. I hope they establish a moon colony for god's sake.

It's about damn time humanity had one

What for?

Simple: the earth is not eternal. If we stay here, we're dead.

Again that ridiculous "we". You'll be dead anyway. But I suppose you imagine yourself living on in "humanity," watching from a cloud... or carried by the solar wind, that's more up-to-date.

Again, simple:

If you care about other people who are alive today, there is no reason you should not care about other people who will be alive tomorrow.

Unless of course you only care about yourself, in which case you are part of the problem.

Is the moon eternal instead?

Is eternity finite?

And you're the solution, like Cobra (damn I'm old!). I can't wait for the day when the likes of you start building concentration camps for the likes of me.

Wasn't it you who used scientific terms to talk about girls at student parties? I know your kind. Humanity is your last resort, since you can't connect with anyone real.

The moon is not eternal but it's the first step off of Earth. There are certain catastrophes that can befall earth but not the moon and visa-versa.

And Zmaj, stop being an asshole.

I agree with Thucy 100%. On both counts.

"Humanity is your last resort, since you can't connect with anyone real." -Zmaj

On an internet forum, commenting on others' ability to 'connect with anyone real' seems a bit pointless. Especially when you can't even connect with anyone here, let alone anyone real.

"Again that ridiculous "we". You'll be dead anyway. But I suppose you imagine yourself living on in "humanity," watching from a cloud.." -Zmaj.

Again, no. As Thucy said, "If you care about other people who are alive today, there is no reason you should not care about other people who will be alive tomorrow."
Whether it be hypothetical future generations or simply people who may follow in our footsteps in whatever form that may be, from your children to someone using a public toilet after you - to not care about people that come after us is selfish and clearly shows something lacking in you rather than something lacking in those people that actually do want to make the world a better place for others.

I find it hard to imagine any catastrophe that can befall the Earth that would make it less hospitable to human life than the Moon. It's not even much of a first step to anywhere. It would be like saying the ability to wade out into the sea until you reach a small rock is the first step to travelling from the US to Europe. Unless there is something there worth mining (and we'd have to be really desperate for whatever it is to make it viable) there is no reason to go to the Moon.

I think your imagery is a bit off Octavious - of course the chances that some catastrophe will come to earth that makes it unliveable and not the moon are remote, though still possible one must admit (asteroid impact, supervolcano, various radiation events I'm admittedly not super-familiar with), but that's not the real point.

The real point is that in the effort to create a sustainable moon colony we would learn how to do it elsewhere, basically on Mars and beyond. That's really important. If you want to compare these voyages to Columbus (admittedly tenuous but perhaps the closest parallel there is), Apollo was just the discovery voyage, what is needed now is colonization - the methodology must be developed.

Anyway, the real reason that I am alluding to is a tiny bit more complicated but every bit as important, and more. Our economy is based on growth, and yet we live on a finite world. It is not hard to see how, if we get unlucky and are still only earth, the economy will hit a brick wall and the society will more or less break down. You may say you favor stable-state economics, fine, but good luck making that a reality. That's not going to happen.

In a similar realist vein, we are destroying our environment with no sign of great change in behavior on the horizon - the likelihood that we will make earth a very difficult place to live is ever increasing - but if we developed a stable moon colony, many of the environmental pressures we currently exert on earth could be diverted to space - mining for instance would be pioneered in space in the same age.

In short for the society that has been built to keep from collapsing, it needs to grow, and sooner rather than later. Again, you may dislike the growth-based, consumption based society we have, I'm no fan either, but I understand that there is really no sense in trying to change it, or at least, not without a plan B (outer space expansion). Combine that with the other extinction threats (disease is one that is rather credible), and it becomes imperative. The longer we wait without it, the riskier.

The tl;dr is that the moon and other points in outer space need to be entered into our economy.

I think my imagery is pretty damned good :p.

You overstate the importance of the moon as a practice site for extraterrestrial human colonies. The Earth itself is a far better test site. The moon is too easy to land on due to its low gravity and lack of atmosphere. The same low gravity also makes it impossible for long term human habitation until we develop some kind of gravity generation machine. We could easily practice the skills needed to colonise a new world on Earth which would provide a more realistic scenario and be far less risky.

The moon may have some economic value for mining, but I can only see this being a fully automated exercise.

Mars has similar problems to the moon, although not as intense. Painfully low gravity, thin atmosphere, no EM field worthy of the name, and it's bloody hard to get to. In my imagery it would be the small island near the beach that we can just about wade to at low tide. In order to get to anywhere worth going we need completely different technology. We need to abandon our waders and build a boat.

The point is that human beings need to build permanent self-sustaining colonies away from earth as soon as possible. Thanks to a number of influencing factors, the obvious choice for the immediate future is the moon.

Of course we need to develop a lot of technology to get this done - that is precisely the point. We need to get good, really good, at colonizing inhospitable worlds.

I think we need reliable and affordable extra-orbital transportation first. No man has left earths orbit since Apollo 17 returned to Earth - December 19, 1972 (if you can call going to the moon leaving Earth's orbit considering the moon orbit's the Earth, but you know what I mean).

@ Thucy

And my point is that the moon is the wrong place. You look at it and think it's the obvious choice because it looks big and round like the Earth, and we know we can get there. But it's really a red herring. You can do better by building a space station colony. At least with that you can steal some of the Earth's EM field to block out some of the sun's more harmful rays. At least with that you can create artificial gravity similar to Earth's by spinning it, so our bones don't slowly waste away and we don't get deformed\failed babies.

On the Earth and planets we'd hope to colonise we have an atmosphere that does useful things like burning up small meteors and making a pretty show. On the moon the first you know about them is when they smash into your colony. The technology needed to get to the moon and build a colony on the moon is totally different to the technology we'd need to set up viable permanent human colonies on other planets.

No, the point is that we need to learn how to deal with those problems - lack of atmosphere, lack of gravity, lack of water, lack of magnetic field - that is exactly the point. Whether we like it or not most of space is not like Earth. We need to learn how to live out there, though, because we can't always depend on Earth.

I don't see how the technology is particularly different. Just about all the colonization prospects in the solar system would require similar technology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization#Planetary_locations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization#Satellite_locations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization#Asteroids
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization#Free_space

Not really. The solar system is really big. It's easy to fool ourselves into thinking it's small because of the vastness of the galaxy, but it ain't. Compared to everything else in the solar system the Moon is really really close. The sort of technology we've used to get to the Moon will not work for getting anywhere else. Mars (a pitiful excuse for a planet) is just about doable, but only when it happens to be close to us. It's like someone living in Lisbon cycling to the shops every day and thinking "I can use this bike to cycle to Beijing and get some authentic Chinese spices". Yes, he can.... but it's a really really bad idea.To colonise another planet we need different engines. We are not going to develop those engines building sandcastles on the moon.

Hell, to have a colony worth while we need to find a way to get to a new solar system. There is nothing humanity can possibly do to our planet that will make it a less good choice to live on that the other rocks in our solar system. No amount of dinosaur killing asteroids or supervolcanoes will make this a less hospitable place than Venus or Mars or those damned moons orbiting gas giants. Most of space is not like the Earth, but some of it certainly is. We need to focus on ways of finding it and getting there, and playing moon bases will neither achieve this nor have any value in being a step along the way.