Did you think we could get to the Moon in eight years?
It seemed a very long shot in those days. So how did we do it? We did it by studying, improving, inventing, manufacturing, and executing.
If we hadn’t set the goal, we never would have attained all the discoveries we made. Without sending people to space we don’t know what the problems will be. And once we know them, those will be things we overcome as well.
Discovery isn’t a straight line. There are always obstacles to overcome. And unfortunately, you have to run into the obstacles to realize what they are. Then you develop a work-around. You overcome and move on to the next.
You seem to want to talk about Star Trek. Do you think a civilization waits until all the technology needed to build a star class vehicle has been discovered before they enter space? Of course not! It is the entering of space that brings on the problems of bone mass, muscle loss, heart deterioration. It is that same thing that brings about cures for such problems.
Then when we live and work in space, we develop new and better modes of power generation, travel, exploration, and the benefits of them all.
When people first started coming to California from back east, do you think they all know there would be gold here? I’m sure there were people who thought it was crazy to come here. Why risk all that? You can be very happy here.
You talk as if the space program was set back decades by manned exploration. Sorry, you’re dead wrong. Sending a team of horses connected to a Conestoga wagon to California wouldn’t have accomplished anything.
Sending probes to planets accomplishes little beyond a certain point. You have to send humans to these heavenly bodies to learn real world things.
Oh boy, we sent a box of goodies to Mars. Bless my soul.
Oh boy, we landed humans on Mars. Now that is something worth crowing about.
Mamzelle, the put upon taxpayer wouldn’t save one single dime if NASA shut down tomorrow, and you should know that.
Increases in government handouts would swallow it up in seconds.
We landed on the Moon in 1969. Today, 47 years just a couple of months ago, we’ve done essentially nothing of import since.
We should have had a colony on the Moon and Mars by now. And if we did, we would have discovered ways to overcome some of the major problems we face in space.
Where are we today, with your robots? Are we any closer to colonizing space? No! We not one foot closer.
We should have had a space plane in the late 1990s, or at least by 2005. We’re 11 years beyond that now, and headed nowhere.
I don’t really care about space probes. Yes we needed a few to confirm certain parameters we needed to overcome, but beyond that the expenditures on those probes might just as well have been burned in an incinerator here on earth.
Today we have no way of getting our people into space. We have marginal increases in knowledge that doesn’t really improve our route to space.
We have nothing!
And you’re proud of this and want more of it.
NO!