Before Obama was elected President we were the leader in space exploration and heading back to the moon and then on to Mars. Now with the last Shuttle flight soon to come the Shuttle fleet will be retired and we then won't even have a craft available to get us into low earth orbit Let alone travel back to the Space Station that billions of dollars of tax payer money went into building.
Someone cue the Guinness Beer Commercial Guys:
How's that Hope-N-Change® working out for everybody?
We will know when Obama truly reaches out to his base, when he proposes a wind farm to be installed on the moon for electricity. It’s green, it will make jobs, it is terribly, horribly expensive ... and there’s no air on the moon. But, don’t let a little detail like that get in the way of your ideology, or placating your base.
That whole space program-thing made Americans think they were superior and stuff. We can’t have that. </s>
The theory of Marxism, “From those who can do great things, to those who won’t do anything.”
we should call it change and hope. Change everything and hope it works
“Nasa ends...”
or
“Obama ends...”
It wasn’t Nasa’s idea. He really seems determined to destroy everything exceptional about America.
Step by step.
Looks like we stepped back to the 1970’s. Back then, at least the music was good. B-P
Yes. We Can’t!
We choose to not go to the moon, because it’s hard.
No worries.. Job losses will be offset by more Census “firings then re-hirings”.
The list, ping
Establishing a US moon base would be cool. It would send a signal to the world that the USA is the leader in technology and culture. In a time when democracy and freedom is being questioned,
Americans returning to the moon would be worth it blaze the trail for the future. JFK was right when he set that goal. Watch this three minute clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYb_mhiE-qU
The moon landing was our highest technological feat that inspired technical achievements. Americans should be the ones setting the standards, don’t you think?
those who currently hold power do not want mankind to explore, they want to enslave and exploit mankind
Tu Ca wrote:
“The elephant in the room that everyone is pretending not to see is the problem with NASA’s entrenched contractors (NASA doesn’t build rockets, their contractors do; Boeing, locmart, ATK, P&W...)
These contractors are in most cases single source suppliers. If you want an SRB for the shuttle, there is only one company in the world to buy it from. The result has been exploding costs. Project Constellation was hemorrhaging money while slipping years behind schedule. For example, the Ares I was predicted to cost $40 billion to develop while being five years behind schedule. That’s 100 times what SpaceX’s Falcon 9 cost to get into space. The second stage engine for the Ares I was from the Apollo project, decades ago. P&W got a $1.2 Billion contract to ‘upgrade’ it. That’s ten times what Space spent to create a new company from scratch, and two new rocket engines from scratch, and the launch sites, and a rocket (Falcon 1), and make it into space.
These huge fat entrenched contractors also have a few politicians on their side (big surprise there) who are good at making a lot of noise. Canceling Project Constellation was the right thing to do. Cancel one bloated project and give a young lean company with fire in the belly a small contract. It should shake thing up a bit.”
(From the Times article comments)
Richard Ingvaldsen wrote:
“As much as I hate to agree with Obama he is right. The Constellation program is a joke, it is nothing more than a forty year old Apollo capsule on steroids. What a shame advances in manned space flight technology stopped advancing in 1979 with the shuttle program. As someone who is old enough to remember all the advances made during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs its hard to believe that the only manned vehicles left will be Soviet era capsules that are almost as old as the shuttle. Guess the government figures the money needed is better spent on Depression era agencies or continuing the mohair subsidies.”
(I’m with Ingvaldsen on this, as far as I could see the Ares was just a larger version of the Apollo command & service modules and updated lunar lander with absolutely nothing new about it. Plus that part about the problems of exposure to Galactic Cosmic Rays and high-energy protons from large-scale solar events has not been solved.)
Guess we shoulda got it while the gettin’ was good.
It’s been how many years since we went to the moon? The last mission was when? Too bad they stopped going. Apparently there isn’t much there to interest us anywas...
Sad.
Good! Great! We don’t have the money! It is our money anyways and I am sick of paying excessive taxation for crap that is not absolutely needed.
Why go back to the moon? It’s been done before. Nothing but a reality show publicity stunt. Who’s going to pay to rescue them when something goes wrong? It’s selfish and would prove nothing. /0bama Weenie Nation rant
★ FREEDOM! ★
Wise.
The current generation can’t accomplish with super computers, what that generation did with slide rules.
Before Obama was elected President we were the leader in space exploration and heading back to the moon and then on to Mars. Now with the last Shuttle flight soon to come the Shuttle fleet will be retired and we then won’t even have a craft available to get us into low earth orbit Let alone travel back to the Space Station that billions of dollars of tax payer money went into building.
WOW WORTH REPEATING!