Moon is part of Mars

[Anomalocaris]

I think the spin-off technology argument is spurious.

  
You'd be wrong.  It's a rare research programme that doesn't generate spinoff technology.

  

If the spun off technology was worth the cost of going to mars, then even more spun off technology can be realized for the same cost by doing the same R&D as before, but then dispensing with the cost of actually going to mars and devoting the funds freed up to do further R&D.   In that case the technology to investment ratio would be even more favorable.

Which is what I said - you start a let's-go-to-Mars programme, but you don't actually go to Mars.

Going to mars can only be soundly justified if going to mars is a sufficiently desirable goal in itself to justify the investment.

No argument.

The spin off technology argument was used to justify Apollo landing.  But the real justification for the cost was really a way to do more R&D for the defense department without any apparent and prohibitive increase in the defense budget.

So what?  The Apollo programme would have been a bargain at ten times the price.  I agree that the Apollo landing wasn't much more than a look-how-much-smarter-we-are-than-the-Russians PR stunt.

Boru

I didn’t say the research program would not generate spin off technologies.   I say going to mars is highly inefficient way to invest in the hopes of a spin off technological windfall.

Whether Apollo program is worth half its price, much less ten times its price, for the spin off technology it generated is debatable.   What made it look like a bargain was the perception that going to the moon by itself more than justified its price, so the spin off technology, or any other ancillary benefit, was pure bonus.   That perception of value of going to the moon if subjected to rigorous examination would likely lose most of It’s honest adherents.

Furthermore, investment in Apollo didn’t come in a vacuum.   At least some of the funding for Apollo came at the expense of funding for other science programs.   So any spin off technology benefit that did result from Apollo must also account for opportunity cost in technologies delayed or truncated by Apollo.