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Many people will overlook this thread, because they're not interested, don't care, or think it's complete BS. I can only say that for those others out there that realize we need to expand beyond our planet for our race to survive, that this is just another example of an oxygen source for humans to breathe on another landmass in our solar system. There was a movie a few years ago called "Mission to Mars" and the one guy survived on the planet for 1 year because the plants in the greenhouse gave him oxygen and food. While the movie may have been a little far-fetched, and the end of the movie was totally 'out there'... the concept of the plants providing the oxygen a human would need to survive is real.
For the human race to expand to other planets, our moon is the first step, because it is the closest. If we had a colony on the moon and problems developed, it would only take a couple weeks for rescue to get there as opposed to 6 months minimum with our current abilities to get to Mars.
While I personally fully support our military, and everything it is doing right now.... Previous government administration (namely Clinton and his presidency, not to mention his totally busting the 'Dot Com' era) almost completely wiped out our nation's military. Throughout it all, NASA's funding is just a tiny fraction of our nation's military budget, even back through the cold war, even though I feel that it would be more important.
It is only during the last 20 years or so that we have realized that life on our planet could easily be wiped out again (it has happened at least 3 times before) by an asteroid or comet hitting the earth, and what if it happened 10 years from now, or even sooner? Even if it's not us still alive, wouldn't we want our children to have a chance to survive? Or if this planet got totally wiped out and our children were still here, wouldn't we at least want our race to survive?
Our race's biggest fear 20 years ago was nuclear annihilation in the Cold War, 10 years ago we were just coming to grips with the fact that America doesn't have to worry about Russia so much anymore but we have new/old worry from outer space. Now we know we're living on borrowed time, and if we found out tomorrow that there is a comet that will hit this planet in 10 years, we have a slight chance that one of our many theoretical plans could save us. If that comet suddenly appeared from behind the sun, we would have only a few months until oblivion.
We have to expand to other planetary masses, and our moon is the first obvious choice. In our expansion into space, plants are extremely important as they are what has given our whole race and everything before us, the oxygen it has needed to survive. Given this knowledge, shouldn't we already be trying to grow plants on the moon? I personally think we should be trying to at the very least be starting greenhouses on the moon, and then on Mars, in advance of our race's expansion to those planetary masses.
Just MHO
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