What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS 2110

The ISS does soak up good deal of money and manpower, not to mention it provides the shuttles someplace to go besides launching the odd satellite. If the ISS and shuttles went away we could be building and deploying the rocketry to do serious moon exploration. Meantime the budgets for those projects are a big albatross.

OTOH, the benefits of being on the moon aren't all that clear. Maybe theres some science to do. The Heinlein model of the moon exporting food to earth won't be plausible for quite some time... so probably the benefit to be gained is experience in living on another, inhospitable planet- rather than safely orbiting our own.

Mining the asteroid belt might be of utility- though we have to learn how to live in space for very extended periods (and again, we need the rocketry to make that possible). So I guess I'd put a moon base in a "valuable practice for the real thing" category.

As far as costs go, we're throwing $1billion a week down the rathole in Iraq, and unless we pull out, will continue doing so for years probably. A substantial part of that money could have gone a long way towards furthering the exploitation of space.

Gregm