Hi EP,

"I really like your Return to the Moon site; it's thought provoking and enlightening."

Thank you - as you can see some people here don't think too much of it, but that's okay...

"A number of the links appear to be broken (I know...it's the unfortunate
nature of the Internet) but it's still a terrific site."

Not only are the links broken, but Clinton is still President! When the next NASA Administrator is chosen I will probably update the site, and fix several problems. For example, when I wrote the site no one realized that Mars was soaked in deadly radiation from our sun, and so we will probably never build cities on it.

"Are there any big or "official" groups pushing for a return to the Moon?"

No, or rather at least not yet... nothing "official", but the members of the Lunar Underground does have a secret handshake you might be interested in learning...

"If NASA wants/wanted people in space, wouldn't the Moon seem an obvious place to put them?"

The goal here is not simply to put people someplace in space else besides onboard the International Space Station. Actually, I would not suggest that a person fly to Mars or the Moon unless there was a real need. Flying to either the Moon or Mars will be very hard work, and not very comfortable, and it will take up time that the person could spend with their husband or wife and children, and their friends.

"And another question: if we can *barely* afford to orbit a space
station,"

Don't believe all the stuff some people tell you about the space station. The amount of our money our congessmen and women spend for us on the space station is pretty small compared to the amount of our money they spend on other things.
The space station has just started to operate, and my guess is that most likely in the end the value of the products that come from it will pay for it. That's just a guess - we'll have to wait a while to see if its right or not.

"is even a return to the Moon hopelessly out-of-reach?

"We can all understand your rationale... a Lunar base from which to identify and track potentially hazardous space debris...but is that enough to get us there? (Would orbiting robotic observatories be more affordable?)"

It would probably cost several billions, that is to say 1,000's of 1,000,000's, to build a lunar observatory. But for the last 5,000 years, about every 1,000 years or so a small asteroid or comet has hit the Earth and destroyed most of a continent. The value of a continent, which is to say its cost, assuming you could buy one, is 1,000,000's of 1,000,000's.

When I first learned how serious this problem was, I simply figured out the cheapest way to build the most powerful telescope which I had ever seen astronomers propose. They originally proposed building these telescopes to find planets like the Earth orbiting other stars. Since the space junk (asteroids and comets) is pretty small, I thought if anything could do the job, it would have to be something like them.

Since I wrote the site some astronomers have propoed using robotic telescopes to do the job, but I don't know if they can be made to work. In any case, they are likely to cost as much or more than telescopes on the Moon.

"If we do return to the Moon, is a skeleton crew of astronomers really our goal...or do we want cities there, an extension of human civilization?"

It costs a whole lot of money to send someone to the Moon, much more than it costs to send them to the Space Station. So I don't think people will pay to send a city-ful of people there.

I don't think there will ever be cities on the Moon or Mars, but maybe someday we will build small research bases like the Antartic bases in both places.
Those bases will be built to solve different problems than finding the chunks of space junk before they hit the Earth and kill people, which is the problem which I took a look at.

I'm pretty sure that most likely both the Moon and Mars will be great places to visit, but you will not want to live on either of them for a long period of time.

"Sorry about peppering you with potentially unanswerable questions (these are only a few of the many your site brought to mind!).

That's okay... I just that this note has answered at least some of your questions.

EP