Posted on 07/20/2009 8:09:20 AM PDT by skimbell
No, folks, I just don't think it is going to happen. I fully intend to live well into the middle of this century, but I am afraid I won't see a man on Mars. We will never explore the Martian canals, or make our coffee with melted Martian ice, or fossick for life forms in the defunct volcanoes.
We will never conquer the Red Planet. Homo sapiens will flunk the next great test not because we lack the technology, nor even because we lack the money. We will fail, because – 40 years after the Moonshot – it is increasingly clear that we lack the willingness to take the necessary physical risk...
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
As long as we have governments who’d rather direct resources to socialized “health care,” various “stimuli,” and other massive, debt-exploding misadventures, we’ll never have the ability to pay for it. Maybe our astronauts could hitch a ride with the Chinese when they go. That’s as good as it’s going to get for us.
No one will be allowed to walk on the moon or explore Mars until a detailed environmental impact study is completed and approved by the United Nations. Also, our carbon footprints will have to be measured to insure that there is no climate damage to either Mars or the moon...
Actually, the USA is worse than broke. If private enterprise can’t finance space exploration, the government certainly can’t fund it. We are going to struggle under the weight of tens of trillions of dollars of debt for generations just trying to pay for Obama Care. There will be nothing left for the military, much less NASA.
There are many in our government, including Republicrats, that I’d like to see walking on Mars, but without a return ticket.
As long as we continue to allow frivolous lawsuits, the wussification will continue.
Congratulations Boris! A new word for me. I had to get out the dictionary. And it’s the perfect word for that situation!
“fossick”
There will be no money to do anything but earthly social programs.
It wouldn't be a man anyway; it would be a wise Latina woman...
If we had an international treaty stating that extraplanetary land and resources can be claimed by any private person or company, or country for that matter, who personally claims and stakes the territory, we’d create free market incentives to go to mars and other places. As it stands, the treaties don’t allow this.
Just some scattered thoughts on the topic.
Plenty of people don’t even believe that we went to the moon. Of-course the moon is not a very friendly place. If this was some kind of paradise, we would have gone back more than a few times.
Space exploration is an expensive dream. Romance without finance is a nuisance.
I enjoyed the Ken Burns parody of the Negro NASA League. They took old school busses and retrofitted them as space capsules.
I knew the space program was in trouble when the astronaut drove a thousand miles to harass her old flame.
I used to think that space capsules were somehow related to time capsules. Then somehow aspirin got involved with their tiny time capsules.
Then the fantastic voyage totally confused my perspective on the subject.
nor even because we lack the money.
Wrong. Socialist countries can’t afford anything.
Now, even if I live to see it, the report will be in Mandarin.
You're getting close to the only thing that might turn around our moribund manned space program -- a renewed arms race with a powerful competitor (China).
I don't think that it would be too much of an exaggeration to call the Moon Program (Mercury/Gemini/Apollo) a public flight demonstration program of Cold War ballistic missile technology. IOW's, an acceptable way to threaten the Russians (& they us) and impress the non-aligned countries with our power. Yes, the Saturn V was not really a weapon of war, but the Redstone & Atlas rockets were essentially man-rated versions of liquid-fuelled ICBM's. The Russian R7 was also an ICBM pressed into service to carry humans into space.
If China makes it to the Moon, then maybe NASA will get serious about Mars & the asteroid belt beyond.
We are committing a slow suicide
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