Man Set Foot on the Moon 48 Years Ago: We Can Do Better

It was 48 years ago this month that humans first set foot on the moon. Let's stop pissing around and claim the moon!

Just because we planted a flag on the moon does not mean we own it. If you think I'm wrong, show me your moon rock. We should be able to pick up a moon rock at Walmart by now. Instead we can go there and get mooned or buy a rock, or even Pop-Rocks, but not a moon rock. In fact, you might get thrown in jail for even having one because you must have stole it.

When the Apollo program was at its peak it employed 400,000 Americans. The Apollo Program cost roughly $22.9 billion US dollars, unadjusted. Adjusting for inflation, that makes the total Apollo Program cost $133 billion U.S. dollars in 2008. In 2008 the United States put out $16 trillion to avert finantial crisis. Now a little math:

$16 trillion / $133 billion = 120
120 x 400,000 (jobs) = 48,000,000 (jobs)

During the Great Recession unemployment peaked at 10% in October 2009. I believe that if our nation had embarked on a national priority project of human colonization of the moon and Mars and mining asteroids we would have been far better off today, almost a decade later.



If our nation had invested in space colonization instead of crooked banks and Wall Street we would surely have at very least an operational base constructed on the moon. Tens of millions of people would have been employed to realize the ongoing goal. Educational assets would have been strengthened. The banks would have many billions of dollars being poured into saving and checking accounts by people who would have been working on the National Priority Project of space colonization. Those same workers would be buying houses, cars and all the other things a modern family would like to have. That means many millions more of jobs in supporting industries. All that economic activity from a $16 trillion National Priority Project of space colonization would have meant a booming stock market based on real wealth instead of inflated dollars.

Speaking of inflated dollars, that could have ended. If you're mining platinum from asteroids you may as well base your currency on that newly accessed precious metals wealth. We may have had coins made of platinum jingling in our pockets instead of the massively debased coinage we now rely on. No more fiat (worthless) currency.

How about them asteroids? If we had of been pushing for the utilization of those trillion dollar asteroids, we would have gained years of experience in manipulating them by now. That is a very important thing. We know that there are asteroids that are as big as Mount Everest crossing the orbit of our mother Earth. It is only a matter of time before one of them strikes home. When that happens, the human species is gone forever. If we were busy mining the asteroids, human extinction from a strike might be averted. We would learn how to steer them to any place we wished.

If we had not bowed down to the fear mongering passed out by the major financial organizations, and instead invested heavily in a powerful effort to colonize our planetary neighborhood, our technological base would be much more advanced than it is today. Proof of that is in the massive advancements in science and technology realized from the spinoffs from the Apollo Program.

Our people can scheme and plan for a future in a closed habitat, or we can break the bonds of our planetary captivity. One will most assuredly lead to our own demise as our systems get ever more unable to keep us alive on an increasingly hostile planet. The other choice is to go forth and take our rightful place among the stars. To have many 10's of billions of human beings not crowded together fighting for resources on this one planet, but rather spread out among the Earth, the moon, Mars and eventually to other star systems. All of those 10's of billions of humans enjoying the unlimited bounty the boundless cosmos provides.