Four years before I was born, man walked on the moon for the first time, the most magnificent single feat our little tribe of East African Plains Apes has ever managed. Now we don't even do that. What happened to the dream? Government mismanagement, yes, but something more than that, too, some failure of imagination and will. [link]

Umm, I don't mean to be indelicate, but the answer is a wee bit simpler. The moon is a huge empty piece of rock with nothing useful on it. It's incredibly hard to get to and incredibly hard to supply. It offers no economic value to private corporations, and its only governmental value — proving we could beat the Soviets — was fulfilled the first time we landed there. Even as entertainment value it was soon a bust: nobody was watching Apollo 13 until everything went horribly wrong.

Look, I'm a huge science fiction fan. Unlike most viewers, I loved 2001. (Helped that I'd read the book first.) I can't wait until Moon gets to NetFlix so I can watch it on DVD. I read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Menace from Earth, and every other moon-story that fell into my hands. Good heavens, I even slogged through Space: 1999. (Which, by the way, inspired the opening sequences in each episode of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica.)

But that's entertainment, kids. I don't imagine our government should be expending huge sums of money so that we can put someone on the moon, and keep them there, to ... do ... what exactly? Send back videos narrated: "This is the moon. It's still cold and empty. Watch us jump real high!" I'm glad we went. but we certainly don't have to do it again. And again. And again.

She's an economist? And an alleged small-government libertarian?

Update: A common-sense case against revisiting the moon from the actual libertarians over at Reason.