US manned space flight in doubt 40 years after moon walk

breitbart ^ | 7/5/09 | staff

[Nachum]

US ambitions to send astronauts back to the moon as a prelude to missions to Mars have been put in doubt by budgetary constraints 40 years after man's triumphant landing on Earth's nearest neighbor. After the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003, former president George W. Bush decided to phase out the shuttle flights by 2003 and set a more ambitious mandate for America in space.

Launched in 2004, the so-called Constellation program aims to take Americans back to the moon by 2020 to use as a launch pad for manned voyages to Mars.

[Nachum]

The list, ping

[rabscuttle385]

space ping!

[EyeGuy]

“US ambitions to send astronauts back to the moon as a prelude to missions to Mars have been put in doubt by budgetary constraints...”

#####

Plenty of money for the ongoing expansion of the nanny state, international junkets for talentless CongressIdiots, and Green pork, though.

Plenty.

[Jolla]

What can a man do on Mars which would be worth that much more than a robot can do?

[Pontiac]

By the end of the Obama administration we will be lucky if we can afford to launch bottle rockets.

[Rodebrecht]

I never got the space shuttle. It’s expensive to operate and a dangerous design from what I’ve read. The Russians have been operating their Soyuz and Proton rockets for 40+ years very successfully. We’re now returning to a similar design with Project Constellation and its Ares boosters.

[Sundog]

We’ll be lucky if it’s legal to own bottle rockets.

[Kitanis]

Knowing the Obama Administration.. he would want us to use Water Rockets... their environmentally friendly at least.

[tlb]

The only reason I support manned spaceflight beyond low earth orbit is international politics. Factor that out and as things stand there is no substantive reason to spend the extra tens of billions to send a men to the moon and Mars to do a robots job.

[TYVets]

0bama’s space exploration program going nowhere.

[Wonder Warthog]

"What can a man do on Mars which would be worth that much more than a robot can do?"

Fix the robot.

[Wonder Warthog]

"We’ll be lucky if it’s legal to own bottle rockets."

Already illegal many places. Also model rockets with engines larger than a certain size. Gotta get BATF permission to have any larger.

[Sundog]

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Fireworks.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Fireworks."

Yup. I don't even like to think of the licensing hassles that the pyrotechnics companies that do fireworks displays have to go through, not to mention the folks who do pyrotechnics as a hobby (yes, Virginia, there ARE such folks).

[The Louiswu]

"What can a man do on Mars which would be worth that much more than a robot can do?"

Go there because it is there! Exploration was once deeply ingrained in the nature of man...maybe that has been eroded away by time, apathy, drugs, despair, worldly desires, I hope that spirit still exists, I hope man still has the courage to push beyond earthly boundries and test himself again and again.

I believe, as our leadership into outer space goes, so goes this country, if we lose the will to push into the solar system, with human explorers, my bet is we will "lose" other advanced technology and we will become another 3rd world, banana republic in just a few short years.

Why climb the mountain, because it is there!

[Sundog]

Fargo, ND, hosts the annual fireworks manufacturer display. They put on a show that consists of 3 hours of competition grand finales. It dwarfs what they do on the national mall for the 4th of July. Pyrotechnics as a hobby-—haven’t thought of that since I was a kid learning how to build shaped charges and fit them on a rocket.