Posted on 07/20/2009 6:57:25 AM PDT by presidio9
The first astronauts to walk on the moon want President Barack Obama to aim for a new destination: Mars.
On Monday, the Apollo 11 crewmen, fresh from a Washington lecture Sunday in which two of them expressed concerns about NASA getting bogged down on the moon, are meeting with Obama at the White House.
In one of their few joint public appearances, the crew of Apollo 11 spoke on the eve of the 40th anniversary of man's first landing on the moon, but didn't get soggy with nostalgia. They instead spoke about the future and the more distant past.
Sunday night, a packed crowd at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum — 7,000 people applied in a lottery for 485 seats — didn't get the intimate details of the Eagle's landing on the moon with little fuel left, or what the moon looked like, or what it felt like to be there.
They got second man on the moon Buzz Aldrin's pitch for Mars. He said the best way to honor the Apollo astronauts "is to follow in our footsteps; to boldly go again on a new mission of exploration."
First man on the moon Neil Armstrong only discussed Apollo 11 for about 11 seconds. He gave a professorial lecture titled "Goddard, governance and geophysics," looking at the inventions and discoveries that led to his historic "small step for a man" on July 20, 1969.
Armstrong said the space race was "the ultimate peaceful competition: USA versus USSR. It did allow both sides to take the high road with the objectives of science and learning and exploration."
Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins, who circled the moon alone while
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The moon is very interesting for different reasons. Low gravity for larger payload launches. Manufacturing on the moon would eliminate pollution from that equasion.
Taxpayers are being offered SO MANY $trillion dollar programs, TARP, bailout of Auto industry, crap-n-tax, health care, Gates proposal to solve the “hurricane problem”, and so on. Can’t we taxpayers get a break? Perhaps a baker’s dozen in order... like solving 13 seperate $trillion programs, for the price of 12? We would save $1 trillion!
The moon is interesting if it defined is a waystation to future endeavors. Those should include a permanent outpost of some sort, as well as a stepping stone to Mars. If we’re just going to pick up some more rocks and head home, I agree - it’s not interesting.
I never mentioned government funded programs. Seems to me that talk of manufacturing and payloads would suggest private enterprise.
Besides, how bout cutting worthless programs on earth first.
Obama won’t support a trip to Mars, OR the moon. Someone my find his birth certificate there.
When are people going to be wake up and begin to understand that no matter how much of my own personal tax money NASA spends of a manned Mars mission, there is a 0% chance of it actually happen in my lifetime or yours. Probably not in our children’s either. There is no cooler idea than the thought of men walking around on Mars, but at the moment there are too many insurmountable problems associated with keeping humans alive for the length of a trip to Mars and back to even dream that its ever going to happen.
Well no point in trying then. LOL
No, I never said "no point in trying." To repeat my point: The landing itself won't happen in our lifetime, and may not happen in our children's lifetimes. When we do get there, the only possible initial benefit we might get from having people there is the possibility that they find life, or evidence of life. While that is theoretically possible, the odds of that happening are astronomically negative. After that, it might take another 100 years or so before we see any practical benefit for having people there. All of this at a cost of another stimulus package or so. I'm just being honest here, because no journalist who writes about Mars is ever willing to be.
So the point is, if you and I, and our children have no tangible connection being spent on a trip to Mars, why should be care. And why should we be willing to sacrifice our taxes? Better that the government incentivize private industry to look at new approaches through tax breaks. Promising developments could even intice future goernment partnerships partnerships with private industry. Yo make sure the first flag planted on Mars 100 years from now doesn't say "Virgin Galatic." When the subject is Mars, too many people are taking their cues from science fiction writers.
From an economic standpoint, it's still cheaper to launch from Earth.
And with NASA's main focus being pandering to ethnic groups, I doubt there will be much technical success in the manned space program.
Are you kidding?
And disturb the ‘pristine’ landscape on the moon? /sarc
The Evo’s will go nuts~!
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