[Q&A+] Reasons to Return to The Moon, WW3 and The Kessler Syndrome, Time Delay Cosmography

On the Moon Question: I agree that, once you strip away geopolitics, the only intrinsically human reason to send people to the Moon is to learn how to live somewhere other than Earth. But that honesty is precisely why it can’t be the justification for a government programme of this scale. They operate on demonstrable value, risk‑reward balance, and opportunity cost - or geopolitics if big enough. The responsible conclusion isn’t to stretch the truth with half‑arguments about mining, science, or speculative jump points to Mars. It’s to say openly that the cost and risk barriers remain too high vs other priorities and we have time to wait for them to fall before attempting such a step. That’s not anti‑space; it’s simply good stewardship of public money. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that human settlement beyond Earth is a long‑term aspiration rather than an urgent programme. If others wish to use their own money to push forward the programme (ie entrepreneurs ) then fine (within regulations). In fact, it’s far healthier than pretending that marginal scientific gains or hypothetical markets justify the current price tag. Icarus jumped off a cliff. It took time to develop safer solutions. We still got air travel.

I think what isn’t mentioned nearly enough is that our possibility of going extinct, of all life on this planet going extinct, is 100% if we don’t learn how to live in space. It’s a guaranteed certainty. We have about 500 million years to figure it out, the sooner the better. That’s the top limit. A gamma ray burst could take us out anytime.