[Michael Barnes]

The United States Government in its current condition will NEVER return to the Moon. The private sector will have to do the heavy lifting, and guess who is going to get in the way of that?

[GraceG]

>> The United States Government in its current condition will NEVER return to the Moon. The private sector will have to do the heavy lifting, and guess who is going to get in the way of that? <<

Well said the liberal argument that they want to privatize space exploration is nothing more than double speak for,

“We will privatize space exploration, but once someone even dreams about making a profit off of it we will swoop in and tax and regulate space exploration to death.”

[cripplecreek]

The private sector will have to do the heavy lifting, and guess who is going to get in the way of that?

The international outer space treaty already does. Space is off limits to military and profit just like Antarctica. Private industry can never aspire to a higher goal than playing space taxi or freight hauler. (to government owned facilities)

[Moonman62]

The private sector will have to do the heavy lifting, and guess who is going to get in the way of that?

I've read that Lockheed Martin on their own initiative is still working on VentureStar, a single stage to orbit rocket plane. We need to innovate to replace the Shuttle with what it promised to be 40 years ago but never was, safe, efficient, and with a quick turnaround time. A suborbital rocket plane would also be a tremendous asset to our military, and possibly a market booster for passenger and cargo transportation (remember Reagan's Orient Express?).

W's Moon program was a grandstanding political move by a Luddite president, which probably would have done more to kill off NASA than save it.