I've come to a realization about a certain class of federal projects,
of which this is a perfect example. They have some modest support -
not enough for the billions-of-dollars part, but in vague principal.
So it's hard to kill them. But the actual price tag is too enormous to
pay. So what happens instead is that they limp along with tiny funding
while the billions-or-kill-it decision is delayed until next year. And
next year. And the year after that.

This has become the common pattern with the enormous nuclear facility
expenditures planned for the U.S. nuclear weapons program (Los Alamos,
etc.). They've been about ready to build them for the entire 17 years
I've been here. But they never do. A new administration
comes in, starts a new planning process, renames things, and puts off
the big spending for a few more years.

I predict a new planning process and new names for the moon-mars stuff
come 2009. And I agree with your assessment - zero chance of it
actually happening.

I am way past the point of exhaustion in reading commentaries by navel gazers who clearly know nothing at all about the achievements of the US space program ranting on-and-on about the alleged waste of money/time/etc on manned space flight -- and in this case the drive to send men and women to explore the Moon, Mars and beyond.  Any environmentalist worth his salt should know that there is no question that our reaching out into space has given us vastly better tools and capabilities  -- a whole flotilla of earth orbiting satellites performing functions we could only dream about 40 years ago -- to assess our planet's environment problems and which one day will help us solve them.  The International Space Station gives us a permanent human presence in Earth orbit that will eventually serve strengthen these capabilities.  But, this is only the beginning.  Space exploration has given us a previously unattainable vantage point allowing us to see and understand our planet.  Every step we take forward in space tells us more about Earth and our universe.  

If the Moon was created by a planetary collision with between the early Earth (version 1.0) and another Mars sized planet (something we learned from our earlier visits to the Moon) exploration of the Moon may produce evidence of the earliest life forms from the newly formed Earth 2.0 as well as clear evidence of the history of our own planet that was long ago eroded away here on Earth.  Instruments placed on the Moon may give us unobstructed and previously unattainable views of the universe allowing us to gain deeper insights into our origins.  We already have learned that space is filled with vast clouds of organic compounds -- making it clear that the fundamental ingredients for life and perhaps even life itself did not originate on Earth.  The search for life on other planets -- beginning with our exploration of Mars - could revolutionize our understanding of biology opening doors we cannot imagine at this point.  Similar discoveries could await us in explorations of the frozen moons of Jupiter and Saturn.  

Additionally, and in my view most importantly, increasing human capabilities in space gives us our only realistic chance to develop a capability to deflect asteroids and comets on a collision course with Earth that will certainly threaten the very existence of the human race along with most of the existing species now alive on Earth.  The risk that we will face the crisis of an imminent collision is not some remote possibility out of science fiction - it is an absolute certainty.  We cannot survive as a species if we do not expand our capabilities in space to permit us to explore and learn all we can about the universe we live in -- and that cannot simply be done by robots.  

The arguments raised against human exploration of the Moon and Mars could -- and have -- been used against virtually every step forward humans have attempted to make over thousands of years of our history.  You can be certain that the same arguments were made about aviation (waste of money - "if God had meant Man to fly...", no practical application), exploring Antarctica (nobody lives there - why go?), or the North Pole (too cold to be used - nothing there, nothing to learn), voyages of exploration across the vast and unexplored oceans (too expensive, too dangerous, nothing worth discovering), or even that boondoggle mission planned for the HMS Beagle.  What a waste!  

The author's pathetic - and completely unsupported -- conclusion that our space exploration efforts will cost a "from one to a few trillion dollars" tells us everything we need to know about the inadequacy of his analysis on this subject.  NASA's exploration program is designed to be funded within the parameters of the money we are currently spending on NASA - approximately 17 billion dollars per year (adjusted for inflation) for the entire space program - manned and robotic.  Programs like the Space Shuttle will be shut down after 2010 so that money can be shifted to fund development of the new Ares boosters and Orion manned spacecraft we so badly need.  There may be cost overruns - there certainly are on every other government program - but the system is designed to "go as you pay" specifically to avoid the budget busting costs the author so eagerly anticipates.  

Sadly, there will always be people who insist that we stay home, don't look up, don't try to move beyond our limitations, beyond the status quo.  Our country was made possible by people who ignored the people who made those pleas to turn inward and who, instead, chose to pursue the challenge to explore our nation and our world.  If one day we start to follow their advice, I fear it will mark the beginning of the end of our country and possibly that of the human race.  

If you are looking for wasted money, I suggest focusing on extracting our soldiers from the quagmire in Iraq.

Without basic research, there is no future. It is human nature to explore. I suppose environmentalist would be happier if we had all hunkered down in Africa thousands of years ago, but it did not happen. We will continue to expand our range, including beyond this planet.

There might also be other threats to human civilization and the rest of the biosphere that we are not yet aware of... large asteroids, natural climate variation, et cetera. Seems like a good idea to have some sort of human presence beyond our fragile planet.

It would be rather shocking and depressing if an enormous rock plowed into Earth shortly after we focused ALL of our effort on stabilizing the climate.

And shouldn't NOAA, rather than NASA, be studying global climate change?

Another victim of Jean-Paul Marat's ghost and his virtual guillotine?

It all depends of where the money not spent of a moon project could go?

I was a product of the 1960's and 1970's space program and became an engineer myself.  great stuff.

I'd go to Mars if the trip was given to me.  And I'd stay their 10 years (or longer) for research and constuction.

But the moon is a loser.

And for now, that 17 billion a year should be spent on Energy in the NREL or other departments, if that's the only place they can get 17 billion a year.   Otherwise, increase renewable energy research to 17 billion a year, and lets help solve the real problems.  

Actually both the 17 billion energy research and
17 billion in NASA could go on at the same time.

but humans in space are the problem---the entire mission becomes "keep humans alive" in an environment that is doing its level best to kill them.

We are ALREADY crew members on a space voyage, space travelers on the most complex, fascinating ship imaginable, one so advanced that our most intelligent crew members have barely scratched the surface of understanding the complexity of its life support systems.  We don't have to go anywhere, particularly at the behest of treacly poets recycling old nonsense lines about the value of exploration (cue dramatic music).

Whenever we get an urge to do manned space flight, let's just drop $5 or $10B more into geophysics and send up a few more unmanned satellites to explore both the earth in space and other objects, which will be far cheaper and more successful without the vulnerable humans.

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

As much as I like "treacly poets" enthusing on the wonders of space exploration, e.g. James T. Kirk pronouncing his mission "to boldly go where no man has gone before" (upon which Douglas Adams capitalized with the unoriginal parody, "to boldly split infinitives that no man has split before"), and Carl Sagan in "Cosmos" envisioning a fleet of caravels sailing through the Solar System, I am afraid I must agree with Andrew Dessler on this, for two reasons especially.

First, the drying-up of funding for true scientific projects, better designed and more reasonable, is an intellectual crime against humanity.

Second, with respect to physiology, we still do not have a clear enough idea what provisions will need to be taken to keep human beings alive, healthy, thriving and active during long residences away from Earth.  We should expect that new difficulties and problems will be emerging all the time, and therefore, as Andrew says, the expense of having always to prepare a new-and-improved off-Earth residence will keep climbing enormously.

We just received a surprise, which is related to this.  The strain of Salmonella which traveled with the space shuttle that just landed turns out to have been dangerously altered: it is much more virulent than its sister strain which remained Earth-bound.  The biologists seem to think it has something to do with the effect of zero gravity in reducing pressure on the bacteria's ambient liquid; some compensatory self-restructuring by the bacteria seems to have coincidentally increased their virulence.

Whether that kind of effect would be relevant to the cells of the human body, I do not know.  But it is certainly true that no human environment can practically be kept sterile for long.

(Of course I will not miss the opportunity to mention the otherwise unsung animal-welfare tragedy, the deaths of very many laboratory mice who were the test subjects in this experiment.  This was an experiment of the wickedest kind: The experimenters frankly expected that the induced infection of the mice with Salmonella was going to kill many of the mice; the data that were gathered were just the records of how many mice died, and how quickly.)

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

253.4 °F - If we could set up a permanent habitat there, what fear would global warming hold for us?

Something is strange about that temperature, in the direct sunshine the moon is about 200 °F hotter then the Earth. They both receive the same amount of TSI. Why is the difference so large?
Where on Earth is that extra heat?