In the year 2006, NASA released a statement that said we will have a permanent lunar base on the moon by 2026. There is a lot of controversy about whether or not to build this moon base, mostly because of the immense cost of production and maintenance. Although it would be a great scientific achievement, both for the purpose of space exploration and scientific knowledge, would it really be worth it? According to NASA, the current space station and shuttle cost a total of ten billion dollars every year to maintain. A new lunar base would cost much more, considering that it would need so much fuel and supplies just to stay in working condition. Even with the huge cost of an achievement this big, there is not much we could accomplish that we couldn't with probes or occasional astronaut visits, and at a fraction of the cost.
Many scientists want to have this moon base in order to have a starting point for further space exploration, such as a trip to Mars. People think that this would be a useless stop at the moon because it would require fuel to descend to the lunar surface, then blast off again, which would make any Mars mission hugely more expensive. The cost of placing fuel into orbit is the biggest expense for any flight beyond Earth. All of this proves that using the moon as a base for a Mars trip would be completely useless and just add to the total cost of the already expensive expedition. In conclusion, even though it would be an amazing scientific achievement to have a lunar base, there are many other more important things that NASA could be doing at the moment.
I chose this topic because I am very interested in space travel and the exploration of the universe. It always blows my mind thinking about what is beyond Earth, and a lunar base would just give astronauts more ways to experiment and research space. The universe really amazes me, and with something like this on the moon, we could learn so much more about the world we live in.
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