Posted on 02/15/2017 10:54:32 AM PST by rktman
According to current plans, a crewed mission, EM-2, would not be launched until several years later under the NASA timeline — certainly not during Trump's current term. That crewed mission would also orbit the moon.
But on Wednesday, NASA's acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, sent a letter to employees saying he'd instructed the top NASA official for human spaceflight, associate administrator William Gerstenmaier, to explore the feasibility of adding astronauts to the EM-1 flight.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Has President Trump ended the insane Obama “Muslim Outreach” directive for NASA?
Why were manned flights to the moon and beyond abandoned? The human spirit needs something to aspire to, beyond what's already been done.
Ping.
“Why were manned flights to the moon and beyond abandoned?”
1) Failure of political will;
2) Ran out of money;
3) Public lost interest;
4) They found things and were scared s-less.
5) They were told not to come again.
Pick one or more.
Like your list. If I recall, the argument at the time was that money needed to be spent on social welfare programs. Then we got into Wars That Never End, to create regime change. Yeah, we’ve spent the money that could’ve been spent getting to the moon and Mars on blowing up civilizations. The results have been counterproductive.
Why were manned flights to the moon and beyond abandoned?
We were warned not to we heeded that warning
HA!
I retired from Orion last year.
Don’t expect to ever see the estimate of the cost to implement the changes necessary to crew EM-1.
If I had wanted to continue, I could have wormed my way into the Orion craft work. But, I didn’t see a lot of launch activity in the near future so................ I retired with 36+ yrs.
The human spirit has plenty to attract its attention besides pointless trips to the moon or Mars. Yes, it was thrilling to witness the Apollo missions when I was young. Politically and strategically they were probably more necessary then, and robots certainly not up to the tasks the astronauts were able to perform. But that was almost a half century ago. I bet we could orbit the moon with high-quality imaging equipment without breaking a sweat, and land a first class package on the lunar surface if we want to (do we really need more moon rocks?)
But if this is really about national prestige? Nah.
Same thing happened in 1962 with the cancellation of Project Orion. Else we would have not only colonized the entire solar system by now, but one or more interstellar ships would have reached one or more solar systems and reported back.
As you might be aware - those ships worked better the bigger they were, and would have been crewed by hundreds and the interstellar versions by thousands.
theres no way theyd have enough spare parts for failures of everything and anything along the way. they would have to have amazing replicators that would not fail, and even then there would be size limits.
Oh yeah - the "Muslim Outreach" Affirmative Action idiot himself.
IMHO Bolden should have resigned in protest when Obama shut down the Constellation Program.
Even though he was a political appointee he could have stood up like a man instead of staying on as Obama's patsy.
He spent years trying to justify and defend the indefensible.
I say good riddance.
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