BTW, did anyone read “True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society”:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470050101?ie=UTF8&tag=slatmaga-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0470050101

I didn’t, but it sounds like it’s on topic.

“In March 1966, NASA told Congress the “run-out cost” of the Apollo program to put men on the moon would be an estimated $22.718 Billion for the 13-year program which eventually accomplished six successful missions between July 1969 and December 1972.

According to Steve Garber, the NASA History website curator, the final cost of project Apollo was between $20 and $25.4 billion in 1969 dollars (or approximately $135 billion in 2005 dollars).”

and

“From 1964 until 1973, a total of US$6.5 billion was appropriated for the Saturn V, with the maximum being in 1966 with US$1.2 billion. Allowing for inflation this is equivalent to roughly $32-45 billion in 2007 money. This works out at an amortised cost of $2.4-3.5 billion per launch.

One of the main reasons for the cancellation of the Apollo program was the cost. In 1966, NASA received its highest budget of US$4.5 billion, about 0.5 percent of the GDP of the United States at that time.”

and take it from there. 0.5% of today’s US GDP would amount to, uhmmm, about $70 billion. Pre-Meltdown, that was serious money, and some people would actually have thrown a hissy fit about spending it on an elaborate government photo op. Today, it’s small change. Can’t prop up even a single failed bank with $70 billion. Or invade Liechtenstein, that would cost more than that. So, I’d say it’s absolutely doable to reanimate NASA.

Of course, you couldn’t get a Saturn V launch for $3 billion (current dollars) any more:
“The three stages of the Saturn V were developed by various NASA contractors, but following a sequence of mergers and takeovers all of them are now owned by Boeing.”

So, make it 15 years and $300 billion for the final launch. Now the only problem is, you’d need somebody to beat to the moon. The Russians are out of the game for the foreseeable future, leaving only the Chinese. Would they play along? What does our eminent sinologist say?

The Internet is, more than anything, a false solution, not a new problem. Knowledge is not something that can be downloaded into the brain by clicking on a URL. I know it sounds ridiculous when you say it that way, but that seems to be the false promise that is being made.

“Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” Maybe someone took “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” a bit too seriously. Witness also the similar notion being bandied about that an etched copy of Wikipedia could be discovered by a future society which had lost the ability to think for itself, and this future world could be saved by the possession of this text.

Knowledge can’t be downloaded. To gain knowledge, you have to think.

Or, to put in other words, do you reasonably believe that humanity could send a team of two men (or women) to the moon and return them safely, nowadays? I fear that the project would catastrophically fail, because nobody seems to have the ability to “know” how to do anything right any more. They’re too busy Twittering to keep tabs on parabolic trajectory calculations.