3 replies to this topic

[Casanova]

I was a kid, when we ( USA ) landed the first men on the Moon. I remember sitting in front of my families TV, with friends, and watching that first step onto the surface of the Moon. Walter Kronkite, and Arthur C. Clarke, were hosting the event, and they both had tears in their eyes.

Well, what happened?
The USA slammed the door on the Manned Colonization of Space.
Nasa engineers, and scientists, had made detailed plans to construct Moon bases, and Mar bases, and to build large space stations, by 2001.
Instead, we ended up with almost nothing by 2001, with the exception of the robot space probes. But I am focusing on the Manned Space Program.
The Shuttle has always been a joke, and the current space station is a floating piece of expensive crap.

I have read many books by engineers, reporters, scientists, etc, who are all angry about this retreat from serious Manned exploration, and colonization of space.
We wasted almost 30 years.

The whining left liberals, and Marxists, who said that we have to spend Space money on social problems, are either playing stupid, or are stupid.
There have been dozen of statistical studies done that show that we, as a nation, had plenty of money, and manpower, to spend on both Manned space exploration and to fix social problems.
So, the space program was not stealing money, from social programs. In fact, the opposite. Much of the high-tech gadgets in hospitals were developed originally for the "human factors" astronaut studies.

The lost 30 years is a tradegy. The reason we don't have bases on the Moon, and Mars, is not technical, but political and business related. Stupid political leaders, stupid businessman, and maybe even a citizenry that seems to enjoy wallowing in a pig sty.

And don't believe all these current promises about a Manned mission to Mars.
Why? Answer me; where is the infrastructure to send a Manned mission to Mars, or even to the Moon. We dismantled our Saturn 5 rockets.

We had two great pop culture views of the future, or rather my future when I was a kid namely; "2001", and "Clockwork Orange" I don't have to tell you which one we got.

Edited by Casanova, 03 June 2003 - 05:03 AM.

[Discarnate]

The problem, as I see it, is an ongoing one, and a pernicious one at that.

Most funding for science (specifically including such feats as a man on Mars or people staying on the Moon) are long-term investments. People are used to a much quicker investment return - on the order of 6 mos-5 years, I'd guesstimate.

Also - look at the average age of the US congress - in the mid-50s at the moment, unless my figures are cockeyed. How long do you think they plan ahead?

Some, certainly, *DO* plan ahead, but most are locked into a 2- or 6-year reelection cycle. Beyond that they may care, but do they really WORK at it?

Similarly, most corporate executives are focussing on either a monthly or quarterly period, not a period into the decades. That, after all, is how they keep their jobs - by dealing with the day-to-day and avoiding a horrendous loss in any given quarter.

I dunno. May just be the pessimist in me, but I suspect the instant gratification culture is gonna really bite us on the keister...

-Discarnate

[Casanova]

I agree with you about the the "short-term" thinking problem.
One culprit in this inability of our present day society to think long-term, are computers.
In a book titled, "The Death of Money", the author explains in detail how the computerization of Wall Street, and the business world, has helped to destroy long term planning for almost everything. He calls today's money, "funny money"; a kind of virtual reality money.

I've read that Congress has always been a pain in the arse, for getting big research, and engineering plans approved, and sustained for long periods of time.

But in Europe, the system is different, yet the Europeons are dragging their asses too, as far as big time space travel is concerned. Maybe, in their case, it is bureaucratic inertia.

It is really sad to watch the old Science Fiction films, that had predictions of moonbases, and Manned Space travel to the planets, by 1990, at least.

[Discarnate]

It is really sad to watch the old Science Fiction films, that had predictions of moonbases, and Manned Space travel to the planets, by 1990, at least.

Agreed! It's really quite horrible in some ways where we are now as compared to where we COULD be.

On the other hand, we're still a free nation. We've had a lot of problems of late, but we've never had anything on our soil at the scale of what Europe (and most other nations, it seems) repeatedly has endured - at least, not since the Civil War. We have the largest economy on the planet, with all the pains that that entails. *shrug*

I'm both disgusted and greatly thrilled to live in the modern day. Interesting how both emotions can rise so strongly...

-Discarnate