Tuesday, September 08, 2009
"To the moon!"
The US Human Space Flight Plans Committee has released the summary of its report regarding the future and feasibility of a US presence in space.
To be honest, it's disappointing. President Bush the Second, in a fit of impracticality, wrenched NASA's priorities away from supporting the International Space Station (ISS) and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) toward a new moon program. The sunny-side prognosis was that we would "only" have a gap of about five years between the last flight of the Space Shuttle and the first manned flight of the Constellation system. Personally, I thought the idea stank at the time. Not since Apollo has NASA been able, whether through mismanagement or budget Proxmiring, to develop and deliver a project on-time.
Well, the USHSFPC agrees with me. They feel that, given NASA's current and projected budgets, it will be at least seven years between the last Shuttle flight and the first manned flight of Ares/Orion. Fortunately, they appear to like this prospect about as much as I do. And after crunching the numbers, they've demonstrated that a return to the Moon is unrealistic under current budget constraints.
However, if we were to give NASA just three billion dollars more a year - what it costs to run the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for about a week - we could shorten that gap and *maybe* make it to the Moon in the 2020s sometime.
Now if you're one of those Luddites who says, "Who cares?" take a few minutes to read this discussion on the many ways that the space program has benefited each and every one of us. It goes *way* beyond Tang and the pen you can use to write at any angle.
I think that it's criminal to continue to starve NASA and our technological development. Yes, new technologies bring their own problems, and there is no shortage of good things to spend money on here at home, beginning with food and energy and healthcare security for all Americans. But we're only talking an extra ten dollars per citizen per year, so that maybe our descendants will be able to walk among the stars. I'd give them an extra ten dollars a year, if it would help us maintain a viable space program.
With all the money being thrown at incompetent bankers, arrogant automakers, and lawbreaking private security companies, it would be nice to see a few more of my tax dollars going to something I'm proud of.
To be honest, it's disappointing. President Bush the Second, in a fit of impracticality, wrenched NASA's priorities away from supporting the International Space Station (ISS) and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) toward a new moon program. The sunny-side prognosis was that we would "only" have a gap of about five years between the last flight of the Space Shuttle and the first manned flight of the Constellation system. Personally, I thought the idea stank at the time. Not since Apollo has NASA been able, whether through mismanagement or budget Proxmiring, to develop and deliver a project on-time.
Well, the USHSFPC agrees with me. They feel that, given NASA's current and projected budgets, it will be at least seven years between the last Shuttle flight and the first manned flight of Ares/Orion. Fortunately, they appear to like this prospect about as much as I do. And after crunching the numbers, they've demonstrated that a return to the Moon is unrealistic under current budget constraints.
However, if we were to give NASA just three billion dollars more a year - what it costs to run the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for about a week - we could shorten that gap and *maybe* make it to the Moon in the 2020s sometime.
Now if you're one of those Luddites who says, "Who cares?" take a few minutes to read this discussion on the many ways that the space program has benefited each and every one of us. It goes *way* beyond Tang and the pen you can use to write at any angle.
I think that it's criminal to continue to starve NASA and our technological development. Yes, new technologies bring their own problems, and there is no shortage of good things to spend money on here at home, beginning with food and energy and healthcare security for all Americans. But we're only talking an extra ten dollars per citizen per year, so that maybe our descendants will be able to walk among the stars. I'd give them an extra ten dollars a year, if it would help us maintain a viable space program.
With all the money being thrown at incompetent bankers, arrogant automakers, and lawbreaking private security companies, it would be nice to see a few more of my tax dollars going to something I'm proud of.
# posted by Loren Davidson @ 2:12 PM 
