There's that, though the Australians were never able to send a planet killing asteroid flying towards England, but what about the moon as a retirement community? :hmmm: 1/6th gravity would sure be a welcome respite for aged hearts and bodies.

Be tough to get the kids to visit though...

Do you realise that by making this argument you're basically agreeing with me when I say that the legacy of Apollo is nonexistant.
And we are back to square 1 ? We have squandered 40 years doing nothing but handing over cash for failed projects that didn't have any long term goals.

Oh please, nobody is advocating giving NASA a free ride or even 10% of the GDP over the next 50 years. :-?
You can have a clear long term vision. Von Braun had one, and it made sense.
It was sidestepped for a "p i s s i n g" contest with the soviets.
And in the end besides the nice american flag on the moon everything else was wasted. Never underestimate the idocy of policy makers.


As it should be.

Back around the close of the Apollo program and the rise of OPEC, there was this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O%27Neill

He asked the fundamental question:

"Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?"

His vision was to mine raw materials on the Moon and use it's lower escape velocity and weaker gravity to manufacture space colonies for the production of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite

He even designed one of these to use for catapulting raw materials from the Moon to the Lagrange Libration points where the space colonies/manufacturing centers would be built.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver

Here's what he wrote in 1974:

It is important to realize the enormous power of the space-colonization technique. If we begin to use it soon enough, and if we employ it wisely, at least five of the most serious problems now facing the world can be solved without recourse to repression: bringing every human being up to a living standard now enjoyed only by the most fortunate; protecting the biosphere from damage caused by transportation and industrial pollution; finding high quality living space for a world population that is doubling every 35 years; finding clean, practical energy sources; preventing overload of Earth's heat balance.
—Gerard K. O'Neill , "The Colonization of Space"[25]

I often wonder, especially as we now seem to be transitioning from the economics of abundance to the economics of scarcity, what could have been done had merely 10% of the US Defense Budget over the last 36 years been devoted to this endeavor.

NASA and its contractors had become a jobs/pork funding program for a bunch of legislators. Actual accomplishments in space are extremely expensive and were never something they intended to fund.

PD

That could be a selling point, depending on the kids. :D

The legacy of Apollo is as the cap of mans venture into powered flight. You see an aborted journey, I see it as the realization of a dream.

As for failed. Nothing could be further from the case. We learned a lot on our journey to the moon. You can't just discount that as failure.



But ultimately unsupportable over the long term. You can't concentrate on the "hows" without first determining the "whys" or the venture will be abandoned the first time someone asks why we aren't fixing problems here at home first (and yes I know that ignores the fact such earth-side problems have never been solved and never will be).

But they shouldn't be so restrictive as to eliminate private ventures entirely. which is what I understand they do.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle2120735.ece

Usually you only hear of this:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

But consider this.

http://mwhodges.home.att.net/nat-debt/debt-nat.htm

I've read calculations by serious finance and economy analysts giving even higher debt numbers, reaching to 70 trillion euros (97.5 trillion dollars), and beyond.

It's not so much America paying for it's spacetravelling hobbies. It is the rest of the world.

But when you want adventures in space: make sure you can financially afford it.

Achtung Fangfrage: how many money do the Chinese owe the Americans?

Haha... "Make sure you can afford it"..... thats hilarious when has that been a consideration of the goverment?

And if the President had stated that he wanted additional monies put toward the space program, you would have complained about that also.

You are predictable if nothing else. :nope:

So what two nations ever have shared the same exact "economic, national and foreign polices"?

Neal I'm with you! I'm as blue as those aliens in Avatar but frack first the Dems coudn't accomplish anything on health care with a "super" majority in congress and now they axed NASA's new spacecraft. I'm considering changing my party affiliation. :damn:


Serously DIS-A-POINTED with Obama... :down: