Quote:
Originally Posted by JackMc185
When I was 7 years old, Kennedy announced that we should send a man to the moon and bring him back safely by the end of the decade. 5000 companies put almost a half million people to work. Not just in the large corporations, but work was farmed out to smaller subcontractors to accomplish a "United Effort" to be the first. We watched in school and at home the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions as we progressed. The Discovery Channel had a feature on that showed a synopsis of how it was done. Ron Howard and Tom Hanks produced From the Earth to the Moon series on HBO. In 1974 Congress decided we were wasting too much money sending guys to collect a bunch of rocks. We have poor people to care of here on earth. Here we are 34 years later. We still have poor people. What happened to all that money?
To see the benefits of NASA you can logon to http:://www.discovery.com/nasa and see the benefits in our every day lives.
Now I read in the Washington Post this article.
washingtonpost.com - nation, world, technology and Washington area news and headlines
This is certainly disconcerting. I know that the circle jerk of fault will start but I guess what I'm asking, is it worth it to go back to where we lead this endeavour or just sit back and watch? |
NASA is still the leading space agency in the world and the most experienced (not to mention a bigger budget to work with), I don't see where your getting the idea we're watching from the sidelines just yet. As for China they've got a ways to go before they even begin to catch up. The only real space agencies that even come close to NASA would be a ESA/RKA cooperation and both would rather work with NASA than go it alone if need be. Obviously there are going to be some challenges, especially throughout the five year gap after the shuttle is retired. The biggest problem though is we have a population that is used to space travel and spoiled by it that they've already been bored by it.
Of course it remains to be seen if manned spaceflight continues in the US, because it could easily be killed off during that five year gap and is already threatened with the horrendous hassle the Ares program has become thus far. Not to mention the brain drain after the shuttle program comes to a close. Of course it really comes down to one question, is manned space flight worth it. After all from a scientific standpoint you'd think no, space probes after all can do any job more efficiently and not to mention these robots cost less as well.
At the same time what we know is that eventually yes, we're going to have to leave this earth of ours to ensure the survival of the human race. Sure were talking about maybe millions and millions of years until the need is there that we know of but eventually yes we're going to have to leave the earth (assuming we don't wipe ourselves out, nor let asteroids do it for us. Though personally I think humanity is tougher than asteroids/nuclear warfare).
Anyway, in the meanwhile I think we should certainly have some kind of manned space flight and that the US should lead instead of trying to remember how to have a manned space flight program somewhere down the line. So, we'll see what happens.
By the way, I'm fully aware that the human race is horrible at caring about future generations in the first place, I mean we could hardly care about the world that the generation after us inherits not to mention the countless ones into the future. So, that's a problem. We're selfish creatures, but I don't know if we care enough about the survival of the human race down the line. I'm even sure several of us even wish we'd all rapture off this earth or just die off.
