[palata]

> I suppose it is as if we had stopped at the Wright brother's first flight.

I disagree. Building planes had obvious potential. "If I could fly like a bird, then I could go much faster to some places" seems like a straightforward one.

What is the obvious useful consequence of sending humans to the Moon? To me this is more like teaching a monkey to fly with a paraglider. It's very impressive and very cool, but I don't know that it brings more than that.

But in the spirit of the ONE argument I see over and over around here, I guess it would be something like: "by teaching monkeys to fly paragliders, it helps us design paragliders for lighter people, and because those trained monkeys were so expensive, we may develop new, safer fabrics that could then be reused in many places. If the brilliant people who work on this project were not doing this, they would probably be bureaucrats or financiers, and nobody would EVER work on developing new fabrics".

Well... I'm not convinced.