The Earth’s moon seems like a nice place to visit, but there are a surprising number of people who seem to want to go there permanently. Manned spaceflight has seen better days, but is it really time to invest in a moon colony now? The land is pretty cheap up there, and no one’s making any more of it… but there’s a tiny problem of getting there. Here are just a few more links about manned trips to the moon.

• Newt Gingrich’s proposal to create a moon base by 2020 (excluding the 13,000 colonists part) was feasible in 2005 when George W. Bush had similar ideas, but now it could be a bit more difficult to accomplish in just 8 years. A new space race to the moon could see commercial space companies beating NASA to the lunar surface… (especially if vast amounts of unobtainium could be mined on the moon). [url]
• NASA isn’t exactly sure when manned test flights of its Orion will begin, but it should happen by 2021. Unmanned test flights are scheduled for 2014, but the new rocket to take cargo/passengers 3,700 miles away from Earth hasn’t been finalized yet. [url]
• What would space programs be like if the Apollo program never made it to the moon? Maybe there’d be a Russian/Soviet moon base or an international station on the moon — or maybe the lunar surface would be covered with robots by now. [url]
• To discover more links on space exploration, check out what’s floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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