The New NASA: A Path To Anywhere, And Everywhere

Popular Mechanics ^ | February 8th, 2010 | Rand Simberg

[NonZeroSum]

During World War II in the Pacific, many native tribes were astounded by their first contact with an advanced technological civilization, when the Americans would come in, clear a strip in the jungle, set up a control tower and loud giant silver birds would appear from the sky bearing canned food, trinkets, fuel and other supplies. After the war, the Americans went away for the most part, but the memories remained. Many of the natives, changed forever by the experience, decided to replicate it. They cleared their own strips, built control towers of thatch and palm, and waited for the silver birds to come back, providing again the manna from the heavens. Unfortunately, many in the space community engage in similar thinking, with a nostalgia for Apollo, when we had a "real space program."

[TomasUSMC]

Think about this. Its been a quarter of a century, no wait, its been longer. A third of a century since we put man on the moon. Our ability to calculate things has increased from nobody having a computer in their home, to people having computers in their portable phones, which of course are smaller than ones wallet.

What type of magnitude of increase would you say that is? I my opinion if we had pushed ahead, those phones would be even smaller and more powerful now.

But of course with a left wing extremist in the White House, feeding the poor by raping the rich is more important.

Until you don't have anymore rich.

[38special]

Bingo. The big mistake was abandoning the moon and the apollo program.

[karnage]

The saddest thing is we couldn’t go to the moon now even if we wanted to. We’ve forgotten how. And we don’t have the rockets to do it. At least, so my scientist friends tell me.

[messierhunter]

If that's true, then a) the Pentagon should pay for it, not NASA and b) Constellation wasn't the way to do it.

You can maintain a manned spaceflight capability without the need for a literal military presence. A civilian program would suffice. Our mere presence on the moon and the ability to get there would guarantee that China nor anyone else could develop a military advantage there without our ability to challenge it. Additionally, it would guarantee our ability to launch a mission to any potentially threatening rocks so that we wouldn't have to leave it up to the Russians to do.

[NonZeroSum]

It is not a necessary condition for us to do Apollo again to keep the Chinese from owning the moon.

[messierhunter]

They don’t have to literally own it to have an insurmountable economic and tactical advantage because of it. I don’t trust them to abide by treaty stipulations, particularly if they’re the only ones with a presence there, and if they develop HE3-based fusion, you can kiss our children’s future goodbye. As if all that wasn’t enough, we have a very real and present crisis of a potential russian attempt to divert Apophis. Again, that’s something we can’t afford to leave up to foreign nations.