Do you really think that we know everything about the moon that there's to learn? That, if we researched the moon with new scientific methods developed since the 70's it would not tell us anything new?

Sure, an economic benefits analysis may show out that we don't expect any (direct) breakthroughs coming from moon research that will be worth the money. Fair enough. But saying that it doesn't make sense is overly negative.

In the worst case it'd be an exercise in (applied) human space travel and closed life support, which is also far from a solved problem... I suspect visiting the moon needs to be "easy routine" before we can even start seriously thinking about human settlements on Mars.

(and maybe we could try growing vegetables on the moon before the Chinese do it :-)

You make a good point. We might not have learned everything that we could. My point is we've learned enough. That was phrased poorly. That being said, going to the moon would require huge investments. Allocating resources doesn't happen in a vacuum, there is so much we can do with money that would be a smarter & more productive allocation of capital than going back the moon.

I'm not against sending robotic probes a la Curiosity or pathfinder. But I'd have a hard time advocating for a new Apollo program or a moon base unless & until some clear benefit is established.

Regardless, the point of the article was the inefficiencies of government. What I was arguing for is the pointlessness of bringing up this argument in light of the questionable returns of a moon enterprise. There are many other ways in which you could compare the efficiency of government investment vs private capital (cancer research, infrastructure building, education, healthcare )

Just because there may be things to learn on the moon doesn't mean we have to send humans there to learn them. Robots would work just as well in most cases. And since sending robots is cheaper than sending people, we could send more robots for the same amount of money, thus increasing the amount we learn.

In addition to geological resources, there is water on the Moon that can be mined [1].

Building a Moon base is a reasonable proposition because it can serve as the stepping stone to other destinations in the solar system. The low gravity makes it more attractive to mine and build things on the Moon rather than having to uplift everything from Earth.

[1] http://www.space.com/7335-water-moon-suddenly-attractive-des...

Yes, but you know, instead of building a moon base to get to the planets so that you can build colonies or extract resources, you could spend that same money on Earth, be it on resource extraction (for the profit motive) or something else that the species finds valuable (for the betterment of humanity angle... e.g. there are sub-saharan african villages without clean water or sanitation, etc).

The economists call it "Opportunity Cost" and all that. The opportunity cost of space exploration is kinda high, and humanity's resources are limited. I like space probes and space bases at least as much as the next citizen of the world, but they're not my priority.

This is a relatively short-sighted view, and the problems with it can be summarized with two very glib statements:

1.) Don't shit where you sleep. 2.) Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

As a species we really ought to stop doing both of those...

It's really easy to call it a short-sighted view when you're not paying the time value of money on the expense.

No, you're just missing the point. People are focused on the profit and monetary cost of decisions based on their limited capacity to reason about time, which is on the order of probably 10-30 years (if we're being overly generous).

Reiterating, not putting all our eggs in one basket ie self-sustaining human populations not on Earth in the shortish term, not in our solar system in the less shortish term, and not in our galaxy in the longish term, is not something a single person is going to do in their lifetime. It may take (tens/hundreds of) thousands of years to accomplish these goals, if they are even possible, but we should start them now because the alternative is a random case of bad luck with a meteor, or a nutter with a thermonuclear or biological weapon, or whatever. Extinction events.

People struggle to see beyond their own needs and desires. If we're to survive as a species, we have to think and plan on time scales that dwarf the current recorded human history.

This isn't meant to be an indictment of you personally, I'm just pointing out that the view-point, though normal and held by the majority of people, is still short-sighted by definition: a human lifetime is nothing in comparison to human history, and the potential human future.

Humanity's resources being limited is pretty much a direct function of stopping further exploration--it would make more sense to try and devote resources now, while we still have them, to securing more resources for the future.

The only thing extra-Terrestial colonization might have going for it is the potential for freedom from being a subject of any terrestial government.

But the moon could be a good testing ground for a settlement. Also, some day a nice starport perhaps.