Ice on the moon a "game-changer"

[Elspode]

Although this thread is going the "let's see who's for or against the space program" route, I'd like to stick to the original title. First off, they didn't discover that there was only 24 gallons of water on the Moon, they discovered that approximately 24 gallons of water was contained in the ejecta of the two LCROSS impacts. These were relatively small cratering events, so the amount of ejecta was relatively little. Since there wasn't a hell of a lot of stuff thrown up in the grand scheme of things, the fact that there was 24 gallons of water in it means that not only is there water in that crater, bound up with the lunar material, but there's relatively a lot of it.

Water on the moon means a couple of things. First, it means a source of water for possible human exploration. Second, it means a source of hydrogen for propulsion. The Moon can be a filling station for further exploration of space.

I'm a fan of the space program because of all the fascinating discoveries that have come out of it. The primary purpose of manned exploration is adventure, sure, but it is also true that a lot more science can be done by people than machines. Machines have to have a pretty narrow focus, able to do only a few tasks, and largely unable to respond to problems that arise. However, manned spaceflight is vastly more expensive, because people are fragile.