Posted on 02/18/2017 6:09:44 PM PST by HLPhat
President Trump has said he wants to "unlock the mysteries of space" and "focus on stretching the envelope of space exploration."
He may now have the chance to send astronauts to orbit the moon, a mission that carries significant risk but which, if executed smoothly, could bring huge benefits to accelerating future missions to deep space...
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
He warned her the day would come!
I miss the comedy of those days.
Not to worry.
If that should occur I'll simply disintegrate them
with my Eludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
I am old enough to remember when JFK galvanized the nation to land a man on the moon and return him safely within the decade. Despite tracks and daunting challenges we succeeded and then squandered that success with a lack of political will and the conversion of NASA from an agency full of engineers and inovators to one filed with bureaucrats and political hacks.
That is technically impossible. To go back to something, you would have had to have gone there sometime earlier.
Why go back to the moon? Been there, done that, multiple times. Excelsior! Do something beyond the moon now. I was a kid during the last moon landing. Thought we’d be waaaay beyond this by now. Armchair astronaut that I am.
Nuclear test range perhaps...
Hmmmmm!
The Space Shuttle became a major problem. Described as “routine access to space,” it was anything but. The Shuttle took on a life of its own and soon became an end, not a means.
I was involved in a revolutionary program called
the X-30 that tried to use scramjets to use the air in the atmosphere to get to orbit but we never mastered the scramjets at the level needed.
Before we can ROUTINELY go anywhere in space, we have to have a space station that can assemble and launch, so we aren’t overcoming earth’s atmosphere to launch.
“Before we can ROUTINELY go anywhere in space, we have to have a space station that can assemble and launch, so we arent overcoming earths atmosphere to launch.”
That would be a great goal for the Trump admin to set. Maybe have private sector firms build the station with NASA only acting as coordinator.
Of course with NASA involved it will get hijacked for some SJW crusade the next time that the American people elect an Obama.
‘The Space Shuttle became a major problem. Described as routine access to space, it was anything but. The Shuttle took on a life of its own and soon became an end, not a means.’
I got the impression that it must have been gobbling up all of NASA’s resources. And it had all of the romance of a bus or a truck, which IIRC is what NASA was billing it as. Some real sharp marketing savvy there.
But as the two Shuttle disasters demonstrated, getting to and from space is not “routine” and remains inherently dangerous.
Indeed the “aeronautics” part got completely left out which is part of the push for the aerospace plane.
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