LogFAQs > #972230561

wpot posted...

This is why it won't be a private entity: there's no profit to be made.

There was no point in going to the moon, either

Private entities are more likely to want to skip directly to the asteroid belt, because mining operations there could generate a lot of useful (and expensive) resources.

The main value for the moon is that it can be used as a launching point to more distant locations. Which would mostly only come into play once we're ready to go to those places. It's the same logic behind building some sort of large space station to act as a transport hub. Getting things out of and into Earth orbit is the largest problem with space flight, so setting things up as a two-stage trip with Earth-to-Moon or Earth-to-Station as the first step and then Moon/Station-to-Space as the second step would be far more effective than trying to do the whole trip in one go.

Getting to the moon originally was supposed to be proof of concept (and political oneupsmanship) more than anything. Which is why we haven't done much with it since.