Tuesday, December 05, 2006

THE NEXT STEP

NASA is planning a permanent outpost on the moon.

The space agency announced plans to build a base on the moon and permanently staff it by 2024, with astronauts staying for up to six months at a time.

The habitat will most likely be built on the moon's south pole and will serve as a science outpost and test centre for technologies needed for future expeditions to Mars.
[...]
"This is not your father's Apollo," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "I think it's the only way to sustain something like this over decades. This is not flag-and-footprints. This is the idea of starting an outward movement that includes long stays on the moon."
This mission will inevitably fuel debates about national sovereignty in space and the leftist paranoia about the "weaponization of space," but these debates will be confronted as part of the next great chapter of human exploration, they will not stop it. Three hundred years from now this moon outpost may hold a place in the history books as the galactic equivalent of Jamestown, Virgina.

Exciting stuff.

Posted by Matthew @ 12:36 p.m.