Not that I have any objections to mass investment in space, but I can think of a lot better ways to spend space dollars than a distracting trophy stunt with little or no scientific value, especially one designed as a rush job, in time for a future election.

How about a spaceport, a new space station optimized to stage and assemble expeditions to the outer solar system, a truly ambitious Mars exploration program, or a mission to several promising comet and asteroid belt destinations? And how about building an off-world orbital test facility where we could start safely developing nuclear rockets without the risk of environmental damage here on earth? This might be one valid reason to justify a permanent lunar station, although I see no reason why it couldn't be done in high earth orbit. These missions would also have the added advantage of teaching us more about how to build, work and live in space than any one-shot, flag-waving political publicity stunt. For the free-enterprise space groupies out there, how effective for true space capitalism would it be if its main function was as the contractor for putting on a Triumph des Willens exercise to celebrate the new American fascism. Yeah, I know it will make good TV. That's the whole point, isn't it? That's the only point.

Even revisiting the sites of some of our earlier, successful planetary missions would be more worthwhile. With what we now know of the inner solar system, not to mention the outer gas giants and their satellites, a truly ambitious set of follow-up unmanned expeditions to those destinations might just turn up something to justify future manned exploration.

All our activity in space should have two primary and simultaneous objectives: 1) to lay the preliminary groundwork for future work, and 2) solid scientific payoff in basic research. Every space endeavor should not only have a specific objective in mind, but leave behind a legacy of training, techniques, hardware and solid experience that can be leveraged onto a follow-up mission. Anything else would just be a TV circus propaganda extravaganza, a one-shot deal.

I have no objection to manned missions, but they should be reserved for those tasks that actually need to be done and which cannot be accomplished by robots.