Some have made the case that the Moon is useful, and human action upon the Moon is useful, and in this line of thought, there are a number of satellites there now doing mineral exploration. This is why we just discovered an active water cycle and confirmed the presence of icecaps in the past 5 years; we're looking. Actively.

However... It is a bit like the Vegas pyramids compared to giant stone tombs in that there is no reason, none whatsoever, to do Apollo again.

Apollo was designed to utilize 1940s, 50s and 60s rocketry technology do return two dudes from the Moon in an effort to demonstrate our mastery of rocketry. Why did Apollo fail to discover lunar icecaps? It ties into the purpose. Starting from Florida, it's more expensive to reach the lunar poles than the lower lattitude regions.

Even though it was already postulated that there might be ice there, and even though we already had the cryogenic engines that can use it for fuel, the increased challenge did not jive with the mission's purpose and schedule. Relatedly, Apollo was cancelled before they landed. Saturn V production was axed in 1968 when they decided they had enough to probably do a landing.

Back to the present, if you had any aim to utilize these mineral resource (ice is the main winner though only the context of larger space activity) than you would probably want to do so with remote controlled robotics. Live humans adds ridiculous cost.

But we're definitely not even doing that for the foreseeable future and the idea that the resources there are even valuable (in light of the costs) is subject to ongoing debate. (Dennis Wingo is a big proponent of lunar use and writes detailed articles on the subject for anyone curious.)

All that said, if one is really curious and has 40 minutes to torch, here is Jeff Greason (CEO of XCOR Aerospace) describing a settlement strategy that may feature lunar utilization of the kind I'm speaking of above.

On a final final note, I'm 110% in favor of the "Obamaspace" cut the Constellation program plan. The semi-privitization of launches effort they're doing is critical to mastering the first step and the Constellation program was only an Apollo rehash that would never do anything useful for settlement.

Besides the entertainment for the astronauts and the people watching at home, it's pretty pointless to send humans to the moon anyway.

There is nothing left on Earth.

Except for iPads and Netflix.

There better be something out there. Otherwise it's just another upcoming dark age. An era with no shift in perspective, with nothing remarkable, just vegetables leaving not even a dent in history. Despite all the VC hype, there hasn't been any meaningful advances in a while. Internet is supposedly an enabler, but it hasn't advanced anything, it merely lowered the bottom line for corporations via globalization. Despite that, no revolutionary advances came out of it.

Just like in Civilization - you get 2 free techs others already know but that's it.


Space exploration is just like Columbus. Everyone in the world back then knew that there is nothing to the West and world ends. Everyone knew they would fall off the edge of world or would be eaten by demons. And all the experts agreed that the future lies in spices coming from Asia. Of course, spices turned to be the least interesting factor.

That is the true loss and demonstration of how MBA mentality permeated every part of human thought. Instant short term profit maximization. Advances never came from optimizing profit margins for sake of shareholder interests.

But who cares, Jersey Shore is on and then it's time to flame Rebeca's new video. Let's try to find a way to increase ad conversion rates on those. You know, For Humanity.

@Antheus

That's kind of a rebuttal to the first posts here that seem to mock Carmack and suggest he abandon his ambitions in favor of making another shooter game sequel.

Elon Musk and SpaceX FTW. He has big ambitions, and like him, anyone that is interested in seeing humans going to the moon and Mars are already wanting to see humans becoming a spacefaring civilization. Why not build up more settlements in Antarctica, which is less hostile, some have asked. Well, we're still not safe from earth related catastrophes there. Also, there's the whole ecosystem balance thing. While the moon and Mars are utter crap as far as ecosystems go, that means we have nowhere to go but up. I'm not really talking about terraforming, but just add some more life to those places.

And sorry, John Carmack, but Elon Musk,has already gotten his first gold medal and you're still doing practice runs on the track to get into shape