How to get back to the Moon in seven steps

[DigitalBuddha]

How to get back to the Moon in seven steps

Forty years after the last Apollo flight to the Moon, our space correspondent examines the options facing companies and countries contemplating their own giant leap for dudekind.

Going to the Moon is hard. And expensive. It took Nasa the equivalent of four million human-years to put twelve astronauts on the surface, at a cost of some $25 billion.

It is one of the reasons that ever since the Apollo 17 crew packed up their kit and flew home, we have not been back.

No way to get there by rolling out naked - http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121213-seven-steps-to-another-giant-leap

[BikerDude]

Now adays there is a lot more to be gained by a moon landing.
Our technology has progressed a lot farther now.
For instance the only way we are able to study the most distant bodies in the known universe is by combining images from multiple radio telescopes around the globe.
The farther they are spaced apart the better.
A telescope on the moon orbiting an array of terrestrial ones along with  the ones orbiting the earth would add orders of magnitude of capabilities.
Put one on Mars and we'd be even better still.
Today we have the computer horse power to use all the images along with vector calculus to see what we can't in any other way.

[Zen Dog]

Now adays there is a lot more to be gained by a moon landing.
Our technology has progressed a lot farther now.
For instance the only way we are able to study the most distant bodies in the known universe is by combining images from multiple radio telescopes around the globe.
The farther they are spaced apart the better.
A telescope on the moon orbiting an array of terrestrial ones along with  the ones orbiting the earth would add orders of magnitude of capabilities.
Put one on Mars and we'd be even better still.
Today we have the computer horse power to use all the images along with vector calculus to see what we can't in any other way.

Seven steps! They'd have to be bleedin' big buggers.