Bush may call for a lunar presence. Hmmm how much will that cost?

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/powell200312030858.asp

Bush may call for a lunar presence. Hmmm how much will that cost?

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/powell200312030858.asp

I don't think he is going to pay for a public esablishment on a place in which it could cost lives to fix...now Mars on the other hand...thats what I'm talking about..or the new galaxy found under the sun would be a decent place to look at...

We're taking this baby to the MOOOOOON!!!!!

The bit in the article about all three NASA catastrophes occurring within the same calendar week is spooky.

 

What the heck, let's go back to the Moon. I'd be behind it if I thought momentum could be sustained long enough to see a planetary manned mission come to pass. But seeing how the ISS plan was repeatedly downsized until the resulting station was too small to support a maintenance crew AND a science crew (hence rendering it pretty meaningless), I have little to no faith. Even more frustrating is when detractors of the ISS point to the fact that it can't do what was promised and use that as an excuse to further gut the space program rather than learnong the lesson and resigning themselves to providing the resources astually needed to deliver what is promised. Do you appreciate the vicious cycle at work here?

 

It's the same force at work now in the wake of the Columbia disaster. The safety budget was cut in half and the workforce by 25%. Then when that leads to a disaster and loss of life and the 'blue ribbon fact-finding committee' concludes the accident could have and should have been avoided and that the manned space program should end instead of being honest and admitting that cost-cutting made such a disaster inevitable. *&%*$#!!!

 

The rational side of me concedes that 90% of what we need to do in space - launching satellites and the like - can be done way more cheeply and effectively with unmanned Delta, Atlas, or Titans, and even cheaper with Pegasus and taurus for smaller payloads (I can watch all of these as well as shuttle launches from my front yard). A $half-billion per shuttle launch is, admittedly, staggering. But, geez, it's still so damned cool putting people in space.

 

Sorry, never grew up I guess. Pass the Tang.

check out this song about the moon

 

We like the moon