re what if the ussr had reached the moon first in article apr ke zv uucp gary ke zv uucp gary coffman writes in article saundrsg qucdn queensu ca graydon saundrsg qucdn queensu ca writes this is turning into what s a moonbase good for and i ought not to post when i ve a hundred some odd posts to go but i would think that the real reason to have a moon base is economic since someone with space industry will presumeably have a much larger gnp than they would without space industry eventually they will simply be able to afford more stuff if i read you right you re saying in essence that with a larger economy nations will have more discretionary funds to waste on a lunar facility that was certainly partially the case with apollo but real lunar colonies will probably require a continuing military scientific or commercial reason for being rather than just a we have the money why not approach ah but the whole point is that money spent on a lunar base is not wasted on the moon it s not like they d be using r bills to fuel their moon dozers the money to fund a lunar base would be spent in the country to which the base belonged it s a way of funding high tech research just like darpa was a good excuse to fund various fields of research under the pretense that it was crucial to the defense of the country or like esprit is a good excuse for the ec to fund research under the pretense that it s good for pan european cooperation now maybe you think that government funded research is a waste of money in fact i m pretty sure you do but it does count as investment spending which does boost the economy and just look at the size of that multiplier nick haines nickh cmu edu
