Regolith is an extremely useful substance, for shielding but also as a feedstock to make a variety of products. I have discussed its value in previous post here:

http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/regolith-the-other-lunar-resource-156943194/

PS The image in this post is of the Pantheon in Rome, a 2000-year old concrete structure. For some reason, not all my figure captions survived the transition to Air and Space’s new web site format.

First, it separates the money from NASA and also from the DOD.

Consider this; the Coast Guard has about the same amount of people as the New York City Police Department (around 35,000).

The NYPD budget is 3.6 billion.

FY 2014 President’s Budget requests $9.79 billion for the Coast Guard including $7.9 billion in discretionary funding.

The Coast Guard is not part of the DOD (they have always avoided this to preclude any Posse Comitatus and international maritime law entanglements when boarding vessels). The larger budget is because of the ships and aircraft and their fuel and upkeep of course.

A “Space Guard” might be established along similar lines. The Coast Guard has several missions that no one else wants. Defense of the coastline (MARDEZ- Maritime Defense Zone) is only one of several very different but necessary active pursuits. ATON (aids to navigation); maintaining buoys and such is extremely dirty and hard work. Search and Rescue looks glamorous but trust me- it is a dirty business also. And boarding vessels for law and treaties enforcement is a very complicated affair not only legally; it is quite a challenge to get on and off a foreign or domestic vessel under all conditions without someone getting hurt (or causing an international incident).

A “Space Guard” would first keep a cislunar satellite system in operation; the equivalent to ATON.
The Search and Rescue equivalent would be asteroid and comet warning and interdiction.
The MARDEZ equivalent would be a Moon base.

We established a whole new government agency after 911 call the Department of Homeland Security by the way. I know because the Coast Guard transferred into it while I was in and that makes me what they call in nautical terms, a “plank owner.” I even have a certificate somewhere.

It can happen.

They have even argued that returning to the Moon could inhibit NASA’s ability to someday send humans to Mars when its obvious that exactly the opposite is true as you recently pointed out on the Space Show Dr. Spudis!

Marcel

that was my friend’s opinion. However this is a good example of why it is so difficult to justify increasing budgets like NASA. ”

Of course, NASA budget has decreased:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
Back in 1993 it was 1.01% of total budget and
in 2005 dollars it was 18,582 million.
In 2012 it was 0.48% of total budget [lowest it’s been prior to beginning
Apollo in 1960] and in 2005 dollars: 16,014 million.

So a slow increase back to 1993 budget or not decreasing further
could be enough to have major lunar exploration program.
And after exploring the Moon, probably could even manage a major
Mars exploration in similar budget, if by that time not much budget is still spend on ISS and the Moon.
What we currently spending related the Moon to very little, so with doing Mars Exploration one still have slight increase in money related to Moon as compared to now- so say 500 million, and dramatically reduce ISS, but still pay 500 million on ISS related, and most of human spaceflight budget being in Mars program- so say, 3 – 5 billion a year. And of course, continue with all other types programs of sort NASA is currently spending most of it budget on- an example of bigger type of such projects being, James Webb Space Telescope:
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

So what we discussing is having NASA doing space exploration
with about same dollars. There a is larger degree of waste if NASA
not actual doing much meaningful exploration.
For example the time spent developing SLS is probably twice the time
it should take, but due to not enough funding, the pace of development
is slowed. Which essentially is doubling the total development cost.
NASA can spend 16 billion a year not doing much- and starving NASA budget results in higher percentage of such waste- as the common solution being delaying project from getting point of being launched.

Though another aspect of starving NASA budget can seen as self-inflicted, in that NASA commits to large programs, such as Hubble, James Webb Space Telescope, Shuttle, SLS, ISS, etc.
So either or both Congress cutting NASA budget and/or NASA starting long term major programs [and running over budget- time and dollars], can starve out existing programs one could view as more “useful” or more efficient ways to explore space or prevent starting new program-
and generally waste NASA exploration dollars.

that was my friend’s opinion. However this is a good example of why it is so difficult to justify increasing budgets like NASA. Everyone is hammered with news about deficits, declining purchasing powers, and then some want to spend more on space? Lots of luck selling that even though USA spends far more in many other areas (amount spent in Afghanistan and Iraq are ignored). But then building a “space navy” is hard sell, I use that term because an article (by you or someone else) said when The Great White Fleet was being built, Navy had many different kinds of ships. Cannot have one ship do all things (the one leg stool). But it gets back to perception. Unless you are in the business, have a NASA center in your area, or simply an enthusiast, NASA and Space is very foreign. Much like a spectator activity but not with action like football games. Persuading what we do now with our space program will have an impact on future is to be, and that is a toughie.

Why do you assume that this would be a budget “black hole”? I contend that we can return to the Moon under existing expenditures, more or less. The space budget is dwarfed by entitlement programs. For a nation with a 4 trillion dollar GDP, the cost of building a permanent presence in cislunar space is chump change.

The history of the Chinese treasure fleet has long been compared to the American space program. The problem is that the Chinese motivation for sending out the Treasure Fleet to begin with was to awe the world with the magnificence of their civilization, somewhat similar to the motivations of the Apollo program. I agree that such a societal motivation is unlikely to be sustainable for very long. That is one of the reasons I advocate putting the space effort on a rational, long-term basis by adopting goals valuable to the long-term growth of society (i.e., develop cislunar space to serve national economic, scientific and security interests.)

Sure I like to see NASA embark on more space missions. Maybe China can be a good buddy to spur constructive competitive spirits like Russia did to USA’s space project with their Sputnik. JF Kennedy may not have made the bold decision to get on the Moon as soon as possible if it weren’t sparked by the “we have to do it before the Russians do it” mind set.

However you have to have enough budget to burn. USA is wasting money in many aspects. Need to learn to be frugal like many other countries and also improve efficiency in many country sub structures in order to save enough budget for space programs. Too many Americans live on unrestricted borrowing and leave behind debts to following generations. This system would eventually crash in a disaster for the poor last generation. I saw some reports that each new born baby will have to share a large sum of debts before they can take their first look of the world when they are born. While medical advance allow retired seniors to live longer and longer while the economy is weak and fewer and fewer babies are born and successfully raised the shrinking work force would be hard pressed to feed themselves plus the growing number of retired mouths, let alone supporting any budget black holes like a moon project.

Ming dynasty gave up ocean going because China was already rich with food, resources, …etc not only self – sustaining but can live a good life. Even to this day China still have greater potential in natural minerals and agricultural potential than Europe. Europe on the other hand was lacking resources and space so they had the urge to expand. As luck would have it, complacency, corruption brought the demise of a past world power and new world powers come to fill in its gap. The Asia mainland is so rich in resources and agricultural potential people there have their hands full just fighting with each other to control the vast land. Once you control good portion of the Chinese territory you can live well by yourself without connection to the outside, like the decades after Red China was born till it opened up to the world. Open to the world makes life better but not necessary for survival. In Europe even if a strong power conquers the whole Europe it would still be starved to death without resources from outside colonies, like the Nazi Germany and Napoleon’s short lived European dominance. Both were defeated by British (and later American) blockade to cut off resources supply and trading outside of Europe.

[ later message ]

I think when the decision was made to reduce naval fleet size in Ming dynasty time the European sea power was still in their infancy. However power balance changes with time. Ming dynasty had more immediate threats from land. Manchuria, the rising nomad land power with superior cavalry and archery skills and stronger political leaders had their eyes set on the fertile farm lands guarded by the great wall. Plus, internal political corruption and natural disasters spurred pheasant uprising from within. The most successful rebellion group even took the imperil palace and chased away the Ming dynastic emperor. It was then a Ming dynasty general decided to call help from forces of Manchuria to restore law and order so he opened up the gates of the great wall and invited the Manchuria forces into Beijing, the capitol of Ming dynasty. The Manchuria forces took the chance to take over and the Chin dynasty replaced the Ming dynasty. The word “Mandarin” is a verbal translation from Mandarin Chinese which literally means Nobles from Manchuria because they are the minority race (Man) ruling over the majority (Han) race in China for the last 300 years and became the last dynasty in China before the first Republic of China was established in 1911. The western image of Chinese people with bolded forehead and long pig-tail hair style for men is actually signature of Manchuria and they enforced this style for the conquered people to the point that if you do not switch hair style you lose your head. @_@ The official language “Mandarin” is also enforced to become the official language and is different from the many dialects the majority of “Han” people spoke for thousands of years before the conquest. Only the written characters remains because Man people did not have their own elaborate writing system so they adopted the writing just like Korean and Japanese people do to some extent.

Actually it was the Chin dynasty, pestered by fleeing Ming forces to near by island like Taiwan mounting sporadic sea raids on the coastal lines they ordered all sea going businesses to be under strict government control which really killed the sea activities. Chin dynasty has their eyes on conquering more central Asia and expanded Chinese territory to places like Tibet and the vast central Asia territory they now call “New Territory” to the west of Mongolia. This vast open grass land and desert is test ground of Chinese nuclear and space programs now.

Looking back you can see that the decision maker made sensible decision at their time to reduce naval expense because the western sea power was not bothering them until much later and it was near the end of the Chin dynasty when western steam ships with powdered cannons really caused headache a few hundred years later. However one can always imagine how history would be changed had they decided to do something different.

Note the quotes from the NASA people in the article that the lunar mission would be to test technologies/procedures for use on Mars. Guess they have to say that because the current official policy is not to attempt any significant lunar activity.

Whatever works, if it in fact does.