Beg to disagree. If you have money in India you can get water supply. Even if you're located in a remote village with no plumbing, water trucks will deliver weekly and fill up your domestic water tank.

So...the analogy to healthcare in the US isn't too far off. If you have money and/or a good job you can get healthcare in the US and water in India (healthcare too).

Yes, and the United States should cut all funding to NASA until power is restored in Puerto Rico.

It seems like the cost of this program is a rounding error in India's budget. Getting rid of it won't give the poor water to drink.

In the book, is the tourism is driven primarily by the inherent novelty and wonder of being on the moon, seeing Earth, experiencing the weaker gravity, etc., or is the draw primarily based on facilities that have been built there, like casinos, resorts, amusement parks, etc.?

My guess is that you would need to have a lot of the latter, because while the former would be undoubtedly cool, I’m afraid the novelty would wear off quickly if the living and entertainment facilities themselves were anything less than spectacular.

> Anyone not earning an income in the US gets 'free' healthcare and has for decades. It's anything but free, it's very expensive.

My impression was that the only way it's "free" is if you walk into an emergency room with no money. And the fact that uninsured people can only go to emergency rooms (routine issues fester and become serious) is in part what drives up the cost.

In places like Canada the wait times are atrocious due to triaging. If your problem is serious you will get looked at immediately. If it's not, you have to wait. And if you can afford it, you're still free to go to a private clinic. But it does seem like overall health outcomes and costs are better than the US.

So...yeah it's true calling it "free" healthcare is a bit of a misnomer but no one actually thinks it costs $0 to provide. Think of free healthcare like freeways: paid for by tax money for the public good, and occasionally you'll have to pay a nominal toll (co-pay or whatever).

I mean free as in if I chop my arm off, no worries, no bills, I get fixed up. I mean free as in my wife is pregnant, no worries, no bills, my baby is delivered in a hospital. I mean free as in my kids gets cancer, no worries, no bills, they get chemo or whatever they need. I mean never going into debt because I need my life saved. I mean never not going to the doctor because it'll ruin me. I mean everyone pays consumption tax here, nobody gets a free ride, and everyone gets looked after. I mean not looking down on another country because they're not perfect when your country isn't either.

You can say that it's practically free given how much US spend for a non-free healthcare vs how much countries with universal healthcare spend.

I think that "free" does generally mean that someone else paid.

It seems like a specious claim that they're struggling to afford it, when so many do manage to afford it.

Assuming mass scales linearly with volume, the cube root of 6 is 1.817ish

So moonisaurs would be roughly 82% larger if you just scaled them up until they weighed the same as they did on Earth.

It's a really sloppy estimate, but think more on the scale of twice their size on Earth than six times their size.

The low gravity is probably what I would have the most fun with. I can imagine all sorts of activities could get a lot more fun. I could learn to do a standing backflip, or even manage to finally break 400lb on my deadlift. :)

Just for reference, the biggest (med-high, annually recurring) expenditures of Westernized Democracies tend to be social welfare (penchants and such), agrarian supply chain, healthcare, and security/defense. Water figures heavily depending on geography. The unifying factor is the need for continuing, consistent investment just to maintain, non inclusive of repair, renovation, or improvement. This is why these things are so expensive.

The European Bloc has benefitted from defense/security being bolstered by US equipment/investment since the Marshall Plan. I believe this is what the other poster was referencing.

That's what I was commenting on though; I very well may be wrong, but my understanding was that the weight of things like barbells is measured in pounds-force, not pounds-mass, so if you were going to follow that on the moon you'd need a much more massive set of weights.

Though, I suppose if you're saying "I'm taking these exact same weights to the moon to lift" then you're right. I was being unnecessarily pedantic.