I see a rather liberal use of "coulds" and "ifs" in that piece...

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If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

Well, yea. If they knew 100%, there'd be no reason to do further research. The potential is there, though, so it's worth investigating further.

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Agreed; we've gained much from the space program.

And we've had gained much of it without ever putting a man on the moon, too...

Hardly.

It's only a successful $79 million gamble if it works. If it fails, and they find nothing, then the amount of the gamble, if they decide to push forward, will increase...

I love shit like this.

"I don't know, I'm not a physicist".

Then how in the fuck do you know that the gamble is worth it? Whether it's "pocket change" or not doesn't matter. It's still $79 million...

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

If you could show me where I've said that "the space program" is a waste of money, that'd be just swell...

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

What you were doing is questioning the validity of their chosen mission and whether the funding is worth it.

I'm just saying that NASA's choice of missions has been pretty productive over time.

That applies to searching for water on the moon....On it's face, it may not make all that much sense to you or me, but then we could have said the same thing about previous missions.... and the results of those are what I listed.

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The world could use more Stan Ovshinsky's

If scientists knew what they were doing, they wouldn't call it "research".

Helium 3 isn't part of water. Helium 3 is made when Tritium (radioactive heavy hydrogen) decays. Water could be made from Tritium which is also a potential nuclear fuel. However, if Helium 3 is the preferred fuel source and is present in abundance on the moon, then we need a manned base from which mining operations would take place. Since we would need a manned base to be effective at mining the moon for nuclear fuel, we would need water and food for the workers. Of course we're not going to find food on the moon, but it could be grown if we had a source of water. So it all hinges on water.

It costs something like 10,000 per kilogram of payload to ship stuff to space. If we were to ship 1,000 gallons of water to the moon (about 4kg/gallon), it would cost something like 40 million dollars just for the water payload. Thus, spending $79M to find a local source of water on the moon seems like the smart thing to do, assuming you see the benefits to manning stations on the moon.

If you read anything about the history of settling the west, it all revolved around water. Look at any major city, its built on a waterway. Water is life, even on the moon.

i would love to continue e-owning the shit out of you but unfortunately i've got some work to do. i'll leave it up to the other 3 or 4 posters who are not doing such a bad job either.

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"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good." --Thomas Paine

The battle for water in the west is ongoing. Can you imagine if the space program were to invent new ways of extracting water from seemingly dry land? What that would do for the world?

But nah, the space program is stupid.

Honestly, its not about e-ownage. Steve has a very valid question. We SHOULD be able to explain why finding water on the moon via a seemingly expensive process is worth it.

In my eyes we have now explained why. If Steve wants to continue to be stubborn, well that's just Steve.

Again, we're only spending $79 million if we get lucky on the first shot...

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If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

You've owned no one.

You're not that good...

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For those who have fought to defend it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know...



If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

Many of the benefits we’ve realized as a result of the space program would’ve been realized had we never put foot one on the moon.

I have no problem with the space program. Its’ benefits have been very real, and I would never suggest otherwise.

However, this little escapade seems to be a stupendous waste of money…

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If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

I'm still not sure how you see it as a stupendous waste of money. If this confirms our suspicions, it will actually save us tremendous amounts of money in our future space endeavors.

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Interesting take on it.

You can only extract water from those areas where water exists. If we wanted to invent a way to do it, so that it would have benefits on Earth, wouldn’t it make more sense to explore those possibilities here on Earth? “Knowing” how to do something will only have a benefit if we can actually do it.

And, again, I defy you to show where I've said the space program is stupid, or that we haven't reaped significant rewards as a result of it.

Suggesting that I think it's stupid is, well, pretty fucking stupid...

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If it wasn't for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all...

Maybe, maybe not. NASA has been known to invent and perfect things that later come to be used in our everyday lives. I'm pretty sure that most, if not all of their ideas, were dreamt up right here on earth. Sometimes they have to get out in to space and try some shit.