[from occupied ga]

Both has/can lead to billions in resources and economic expansion for the U.S..

I disagree. You're overlooking several things:

1. First and foremost is the immense cost of getting anything back from the moon. There is literallly no material substance that could be obtained on the moon that wouldn't be cheaper to obtain right here on earth
2. Second, WHAT is on the moon anyway? Alaska gave things like gold, oil, fish, timber. Since the moon doesn't have air or life, we can let out fish and timber. Since the latest moon formation theory considers it to be the ejecta from the mantle due to a really large collision early in earth's history, it is unlikely to have much in the way of heavy metals, and I doubt it has much oil, but even if it were composed of crude oil it would not be economically feasible to exploit it. It short to the best of anyone's knowledge it's a ball of rock, and if you want rocks, you can pick them up just about anywhere prety cheaply.
3. There is the lost opportunity cost. For every dollar spent (or squandered) that is forcibly extracted form the taxpayers, a dollar's worth of something that those selfsame taxpayer actually want isn't manufactured developed or purchased.

In short a taxpayer funded lunar colony is nothing but a giant waste of resources.

[ari-freedom]

For national security reasons, you want to be on the moon. China has already demonstrated how easy it is to take down a satellite.

[W. W. SMITH]

1; helium three, immense value fuel for power plants.
2; see #1
3; one insane microbiologist viewing humans as parasites and a moon colony would be a lost opportunity for the survival of the human species.

[jpsb]

"First and foremost is the immense cost of getting anything back from the moon. There is literallly no material substance that could be obtained on the moon that wouldn't be cheaper to obtain right here on earth"

The above is not necessarily true, H3 is thought to be the ideal fuel for fusion based power plants. H3 is hideously expensive here on Earth but relatively abundant on the Moon. So if a fusion based power plants is ever built, the H3 on the moon might make it profitable to go there. Also, if do not know what else is on the moon. So a blanket statement about nothing of value being there is rather foolish to make.

[VanDeKoik]

Alaska gave us nothing in the beginning.

Oil? Not until the 20th century.

Gold? Not until around 1900.

Fir? We were not short of that to the point to buy the place.

And anything we did get out of there cost much more to ship back here then it was worth for the first 40 years. Most people wanted the government to instead rebuild the nation after the war.

No one called Stewards Icebox because they knew it was full of gold and oil.

The point is that you stake the territory, then you get what you can. Costs will fall as new methods are employed.

Or you can leave it all to other countries that will gladly sell the spoils to us at a greatly inflated cost.

[struggle]

Well, if large swaths of ice are found on the moon (as studies suggest), you would simply need to mine the ice and it would provide O2, water, and humans would provide the Co2 for plant growth. A preliminary base would do very well on the pole, where both solar power and ice are plentiful.

Ilmenite - which is plentiful on the moon - provides excellent titanium, iron, and oxygen when broken down.

Anthorite - also plentiful - produces silicon, calcium, and oxygen.

The only thing really missing would be nitrogen and meat. The moon, however, and the technologies created would definitely allow people to leave to other planets within a decade or so. We should have never left the moon, but we simply didn’t have the technology to have a sustained presence in the 60’s - we do now.

[SamAdams76]

True, the moon is probably just a big rock that is useless to us from a material perspective. However, it is an important training/staging area for us to develop technologies and techniques for exploring space further. It would probably also be a good jumping off point to explore other planets, less gravity and all that. So establishing a base on the moon is necessary if we are ever to get to the next level of space exploration. You have to start somewhere.

By the way, I saw the Newt Gingrich speech yesterday on the C-SPAN video. I'm not a big Newt fan but his speech really impressed me. No notes, no teleprompter, yet gave a very inspiring and informative speech right off the top of his head.

[mrreaganaut]

In short a taxpayer funded lunar colony is nothing but a giant waste of resources.

Sadly, I agree. However, all that a properly run government does is a waste of resources: courts to punish criminal activity and settle private disputes, and military spending for attacks that rarely come.

The question is, then: what is justifiable waste? A moon base for 'scientific' or 'jobs' purposes, no. Stopping a Chinese orbital missile base, yes. This is why the Constitution permits Army and Navy spending, but not scientific spending (not that anyone notices that, anymore).

If Newt can keep U.S. rocket/missile technology ahead of China's, then I think that "giant waste of resources" is actually well spent.

[Jagermonster]

Petroleum was not a major economic resource in 1867 when they made the Alaska purchase, and oil was not discovered there until almost 40 years later in 1896. Just because a commodity isn’t valuable yet or discovered yet doesn’t mean it won’t be later, for purposes not yet imagined.