JFK had the most rational plan for space exploration. He wanted to pool our national resources with the Soviets in 1963 for a joint moon mission. In fact, that was what his Apollo Program was supposed to do, before NASA DISCO intelligence operations  (a separate, 'need to know' agency not part of the engineering work or space science), helped to remove him via the coup d'etat.

From a financial standpoint, NASA itself had a lot to gain from the elimination of JFK in that fateful year. It is very likely  JFK would not have signed off on NASA's appropriations budget in Dec. 1963, due to NASA's hard-headed and  irrational intransigence towards the joint lunar mission with the Soviets. The Soviets were willing and ready, but NASA  was fighting Kennedy tooth and nail to avoid it. This has been documented historically, it is not my subjective opinion.

Note that my critique of NASA in this important period (1961-1963) centers on upper level management.  The majority of NASA employees working back then, on the rank-and-file level, I am sure they would probably have been able to handle a joint US-USSR space mission.  After all, the more-conservative Nixon did it with Soyuz 10 years after JFK's original proposal.  That's because the politics were secondary to the actual mission(s).

In any event, the biggest problem remains the same today. Every nation is competing against the other nation in space,  completely counter to JFK's idea which was proposed at the UN in Sept. 1963.

IMHO national space programs are little more than welfare agencies that drain tax dollars from the working citizens and  provide very little in return for them, outside of the so-called "prestige factor". Such etheral benefits satisfy people who are easily manipulated by psy-ops and other forms of thought manipulation, while most of us are more practical-minded and are not convinced by such hoopla and theatrics.

Corporate welfare is still welfare, it isn't any better because it benefits the big contractors in the military-industrial complex.  And yet, privatizing something completely down-to-Earth like Social Security is supposed to be a good idea by the same crowd of politicians!

If any space agency and their contracting concerns, such as NASA, Arianne, the Japanese, Chinese and Russian space agencies, if any of them really were capable of bringing anything back of value (titanium, He-3, ect.) from the moon, beyond the "prestige factor" of landing on the moon, someone should have a plan to do that by now.  It would have been privatized like the commercial airliner industry.

What Is the Real Business of Space?

The escape velocity to get into space, or rather, the work required to move a body from the surface of the earth to infinity is about 6.0 x 10^7 J/kg which can be translated into about 25,000 mph. A standard physics equation. Obviously, you don't build these kinds of ships out of wood, your life-support systems are very exact and demanding, and even more to the point, the government which finances your jaunt into this New World must have a reasonable expectation of a ROI  (return on investment). If it doesn't, it is quickly going bankrupt, because it's a million-times more expensive, and you better make a million-times more money if you even want to break even.

One of the mistakes people make is that they associate the exploration of space with the previous explorations of Earth. Columbus used free energy (old-fashioned wind technology and sail power) to discover the New World (discovery, as in a narrow-minded West European sense, the native peoples of Turtle Island never could have discovered Europe, of  course). Wind and sails cost Columbus nothing in terms of the energy being harnessed, although it must be noted that the 
Spanish monarchy financed the trip - built the ships, loaned him the money for the manpower and provisions, ect.


NASA has determined that the expense to launch objects into orbit costs approx.$25,000/kg. per payload. That's a Year 2000 estimate, and no matter what year, the costs don't change that much. Personally I'm not convinced it actually capitalizes the true costs of its operations, such as the payroll for the myriad of technicians and support crews, the actual construction and long-term maintenance of the space vehicles, booster rockets and assorted hardware. Let's no forget about the costs for the mandatory insurance to cover their mission failures, such as when their space rockets explode or crash on landing.  The failure rate of an expendable rocket is about 1 in 20, but the government doesn't have to insure itself as long as the tax-payers keep subsidizing NASA's consistent record of failures.

There are locations on the moon which have a composition of 10% titanium dioxide, titanium is an important element with a high demand but it's relatively scarce on earth. Ideally you would want to mine the titanium dioxide on the moon, extract it, and load it on a space-craft and delivered back to earth, such that it can be sold at a more competitive price than what you can get for titanium where it is mined on the earth.

Here on earth, the production (in 2003 numbers) of titanium dioxide is approximately 50,000 tons per year at a market value of $600 million (that's about $12/lb). Depending on the quality, titanium-based ore extraction can cost as low as $12,000 per metric ton, that's even less, $6/lb. In the future, titanium production on earth could be cost-competitive with the market of high-grade stainless steel. And there will always be a demand for titanium. It's as light as aluminum and 
elastic as steel. The newest US F22 fighter-jet is 39% by weight of titanium, probably the highest proportion of titanium of any aircraft. Russia, Kazakhstan and Japan now account for an estimated 75% of world production of the precious metal.