Seriously....

[Colonel Flagg]

I think it is astonishing that we went to the moon in 1969 with slide rules as the primary means of computation among NASA scientists and engineers, and yet with all the computing power of the present day, we're still hovering in low earth orbit in a tin can which will be obsolete in 10 years.

The robotic missions to Mars, Venus and Saturn, and the continuing missions to Mercury, Pluto and the asteroid belt prove that we have the technical expertise, but as we all know, sending humans is much more costly than sending robots - you have to keep humans alive, after all.

The only reason to return to the moon would be to establish a PERMANENT base there, probably in the south polar region. We could then prospect for usable minerals and compounds, one of which is known to be water.

I agree with the observation that the original astronauts who went to the moon did it as part of a big "in your face" to the Soviet Union. There was very little scientific work of note done during these missions that couldn't be done from the surface of the earth, aside from collecting moon rocks.