I agree. Manned space programs are a waste of money. Space is a dangerous place inimical to life. There is nothing out there, no places to go, no economical resources to claim. The analogy to seafaring implicit in the term spacefaring is an emotional appeal to adventure and discovery. But going to the moon is not comparable to the discovery and colonization of America. I am happy we went to the moon, it is a great achievement but nobody can live there or on Mars. Though I oppose govt stimulus spending, if we must spend a fortune on an "adventure" program let's colonize the oceans or learn to sea-farm or drill to the center of the Earth or build giant pyramids in the Nevada desert. Such projects would at least have the virtue of being honest goals.
> The thing is, nobody has compared the moon and North America.
The comparison is implicit and my statement was a generalization; that spacefaring means traveling and colonizing the moon and beyond.
> Instead.. the moon is analogous to the inhabitable rocky island just off the coast, just past the horizon.
This is exactly the analogy I was rejecting in my comment. The moon and space are inhospitable. Even the astronauts who went to the moon and back were lucky they weren't fried by radiation. They were getting dosed the whole way and avoided a solar flare or radiation flux that would have killed them out right. Not to mention the deleterious effects of long term zero-G on biological systems. For the Vikings it was "relatively" easy to get there by orders of magnitude and no need to bring air, food and water to their destination and total dependence on complex support systems.
I'm not trying to quash your dreams and I am as big a fan of the early explorers as the next guy but living in space is totally impractical at this point. I wouldn't rule out venturing out in space some day but that is probably 100's of years away, if ever.
I think you are grossly underestimating how difficult it was to build a ship capable of traveling for a few days, landing at islands with no source of food or fresh water, and returning safely home 1300 years ago.
The only thing on your list they didn't have to worry about was bringing along oxygen. Food? Water? Life support systems? Check. Check Check.
The only difference is that early sea explorers were able to realize economic benefits incrementally. With space flight, the possibility of incremental economic viability is murky at best, and almost certainly improbable.
But you honestly strike me as somebody who hasn't grown up on a coast. The ocean is a dangerous, dangerous place. So much so that even now we haven't come close to mastering it.
Today, we're the 8th century vikings. Not the 14th. But there'd never have been 14th century vikings without the icremental achievements along the way...
"I think you are grossly underestimating how difficult it was to build a ship capable of traveling for a few days, landing at islands with no source of food or fresh water, and returning safely home 1300 years ago."
If I am, so what? That is completely irrelevant to the point that space is inhospitable to human life and drastically different than setting sail to risky and unknown, far-away destinations on the earth. Nobody is going to get space-ship wrecked on an asteroid. They would be dead.
"The only difference is that early sea explorers were able to realize economic benefits incrementally."
That is far from the "only" difference and this statement is delusional if you actually believe it. I think that you've been reading too much science fiction.
Actually, I'm not much of a sci fi fan. You've been trying the "Sci Fi Dreamer Pander" three posts in a row now. Starting to get old. It's an obvious way of saying "you're affected by some dogma, I'm not." Nice try. Nobody is buying it.
