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spacester
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VSE may be dead, and with it NASA'a plans for a lunar base. CEV, an inherently lunar capable vehicle, may survive, but the South Pole Station may be out. <br /><br />Rampant speculation, maybe, but that's what the outlook seems to be. <br /><br />So folks may easily conclude that chances for private activity there is out as well. <br /><br />As far as moon industry goes, there still is a compelling and effective rationale to support it. The trouble is, the first step is for everyone who matters to take my word for it. LOL<br /><br />Let's say we've tentatively identified Tourism as our target industry to become the biggest on the Lunar surface. For that activity to become more than a series of encampments, to become an actual industry-sized industry as it were, will require some kind of positive-feedback - viral perhaps - to fuel growth.<br /><br />So if the seed is the encampment of early-adopting private lunar pioneers, what is the fruit? How does that mission boot-strap into large permanently staffed facilities?<br /><br />What is it that tourists do?<br /><br />1. Be There. <br /><br />2. Recreate. Do things for fun.<br /><br />See where I'm going with this? Not yet?<br /><br />What do you need to have, to support all this activity?<br /><br />A playground, that's what you need.<br /><br />Now expand that thought a bit. Not just a specific playground, but the idea that it is ALL a playground. That's what it's there for. That is the destiny of the lunar surface: Mankind's Playground.<br /><br />So this is the mindset I invite others to adopt. If everyone shared this mindset, profitable business plans would suddenly appear.<br /><br />The Moon is our Playground. We go to the moon to have fun.<br /><br />It is not beneath mankind's dignity to go there for that purpose. Play is essential, individually and collectively.<br /><br />In this case, the economic growth generated by all this play, could be a cornerstone - along with energy technologies - of the Next Great Economic Boom. That's how essent <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>