The Moon may well be critically important, but it certainly isn’t clear right now why that might be so, at least to potential beneficiaries without an economical strategy for space transportation. To Mike Griffin’s credit, I think he understands that a new space transportation architecture is more important than a return to the Moon.

From the perspective of developmental technology, there is an existing template for going to the Moon. There isn’t really one for energy independence.

Another particular problem with NASA has been this obsession with Mars. A human mission to Mars at this time cannot be more than flags & footprints considering the cost of really developing Mars as a second outpost of humanity.

This is why the Moon is critically important, and creating an industrial infrastructure on the Moon and beyond is the only true rational for the effort. until this becomes core values of space advocates, space exploration will continue in circles.

Good to see more people writing on this.

You make a valid point that merits a look at possible historical precedents.

You must acknowledge, however, that our current information-saturated society and the quasi-democratic governments existing therein (for better or worse) operate under a different paradigm than that in which James I and his parliament found themselves (or Hitler, Stalin, et al—they executed a number of large programs that their people on the street were unaware of, too).

Your points are good, but it is also worth considering that governments have historically undertaken large programs that were not of any particular interest to the general public. In the early 17th Century, how much did a villager in Yorkshire know or care about the settlement of Jamestown?

The Communist threat that sustained our policies throughout the multi-decade Cold War was very real, even to the folks on the street. It began right after we had fought an immensely costly war to prevent one set of autocratic regimes from dominating the globe, and everyone could see on the news or in their school textbooks the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Schoolkids were actually crawling under desks for a few years! You don’t get much more ‘real’ than that.

Space exploration, on the other hand, isn’t really a part of everyone’s daily consciousness. For most people it is an occasional 30-second “gee whiz” entertainment sprinkled in amongst all the other distractions in their lives, brought to them when (and if) the news media sees fit. (Let’s face it: “Space Week” is primarily viewed by those already enamored of spaceflight.) All the benefits gained directly or indirectly over the years (weather, communications) are just technology givens to them which they never associate with the original exploratory space programs that brought them into being.

Before there is any chance of creating a long-term commitment in the public (and then the govt) to space exploration, we need to move it (space exploration) further up in their consciousness, to the point that they are actually aware of what is going on, that what is going on has enough inherent ‘entertainment’ value to sustain THEIR interest longer than 30 seconds at a time (well-told stories always do), and that further exploration promises even better fun for them in the future.