We once heard that come from the mouth of a young and optimistic president; John F. Kennedy. With plans to get to Mars by 2030, there are some people who choose to stick back and enjoy Earth, but why haven't we been aiming closer?
The people over at Google's "Lunar XPRIZE", have actually thought of just that and are offering those who can privately fund their own spacecraft to the moon to take a series of high definition pictures, a grand total of $20 million dollars. More information can be found here about the event: http://lunar.xprize.org/
For all of those amateur rocket scientists and engineers, this is your chance to get involved in something spectacular and course-changing for the nation let alone the Earth.
There are many reasons to go back to the moon, the biggest being technology. The ability of going back and being able to send pictures offers the world a look at what we can do collectively. It also shows off who is currently stronger in this massive space race.
It will allow future generations to hone their skills of aerospace engineering and creativity that much more and push humans far into the realms of the undiscovered. For one, the costs of all of the ships to be entered into the contest are to be privately funded. This means they will be working on an even tighter budget. The second is to be able to have communications with the ship, on the moon, to take pictures, which will involve timing and cooperation of even more engineers.
Why doesn't NASA just go back?
The main reason is that it is not within the budget to be able to, but also, there are more plans involved than just a trip there and back. The new plans for the future are to be space explorers, as well as, to be able to send up more powerful, more light, more cheap, and more sustainable and safe rockets and ship in tow. This is quite the setback considering during the Apollo program, the budget was made up of 5% of the federal budget, but has dwindled since to less than 1% and has no future of returning.
Still, what we make will I'm sure will amaze and promote science as a whole, and will be a good pastime to remember we are all citizens of this planet. As we have seen time and time again, it is science and the pursuit of knowledge that bind us stronger than any team can, as we stand as one.
So to the future Interstellar travelers, I have but one suggestion: If you never stop to look back, you won't know where forward is.
