I'm perfectly aware of what technologies were pioneered in the Space Race. That was 60 years ago, and there's no reason to believe any of those technologies required a lunar mission to achieve. But that's not my principal objection. You want to fund scientific research, I am with you. You want to fund research into the physics necessary to unlock energy sources that can get us to an adjacent solar system, I am on board.

What we're doing is none of those things. We're re-using 1960's technology to go back to a place we've already been, and thence re-using 1960's technology to visit another planet in the solar system, and plant a flag and a plaque. That's IT. There's no payoff, no other objective, no practical payoff for the billions in taxpayer dollars and millions of tons of CO2 we'll be producing to carry of what can only be a P.R. stunt.

We don't have the technology to terraform Mars, or to even build a permanent settlement there. You want to colonize the solar system? Start by creating a self-sufficient settlement in Antarctica. Because that's about a hundred times more feasible than Mars. Prove you can do that, and then we'll talk.