Quote:
Originally Posted by PhantomWolf
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A lot of scientists would agree with you, but remember, it's not Scientists who are writting the cheques, it's the Politicians and like it or not, they are more interested in their comfy office chairs in Washington than in pretty pictures of the Earth from the moon which cost the taxpayer a billion dollars to get, especially when they could be using that billion dollars to fund a pet project in their own State hence creating jobs and winning more votes next election, rather then letting Lousiana, Florida and Texas steal it all in space dollars. That's the way Politicians think. They don't care about space flights, manned or otherwise, they only care about getting re-elected next time, and spending money on pretty pictures of the moon when we already have a ton of them is not going to win them votes.
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I'm one of those taxpayers, though admittedly a weird one who would spend a lot more money on NASA. But given budgetary limitations, I would rather see NASA spend money on new rovers for Mars or a Hubble repair mission, than trying to convince HBers and fence-sitters of what we accomplished almost 30 years ago. The physical evidence we went to the moon is overwhelming and readily available to anyone who is interested. If we return to the moon for further science or as a step-off point to Mars, great, but we don't need to redo what we've already done.