And all we've managed to do since then was land on the moon a couple times.
Kind of sad actually. Stephen Colbert had Jim Lovell (leader of the Apollo 13 crew) on his show tonight and I think he was right when he said he had a better childhood than his kids did because his heroes were astronauts, and it was exciting, whereas heroes now are celebrities.
I want to be excited about something like that again. Not just a point of national pride (though there is that), but also the last great frontier (other maybe than the depths of the ocean), the place where humans will have to explore and colonize to spread ourselves out and see more of the galaxy. And the best we can do is a crappy little space station and not having been to the moon in 30 years? Weak.
I'm mildly excited about going to Mars, but the only reason Bush is even talking about Mars and the moon is because he wants us to get there to mine resources (well, one particular resource) before anyone else gets there. The new space race isn't that far away (and could come faster if any sort of fusion power is ever perfected). But I wish we were excited about going just for the sake of adventure and pushing our limits. I wish people actually cared. And I wish the President was serious enough about it to bump NASA's funding a little bit.
Posted by brojack17 (Member # 9189) on :
beep beep beep
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Would there be any negative consequences sufficiently severe to overshadow the hilarity of the US using a SAM to blow up one of the dead Russian satellites in our atmosphere every anniversary of sputnik?
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Why not? The US has been trying to close off space by littering LowEarthOrbit with garbage for 35years now.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
kinda ironic, imprisoned by our own success.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
I have hopes that with China and India beginning to reach for the stars there'll be a new, 21st century space race. I would really like the US to be a part of it, but ultimately I just want humanity to do this.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
I so wish today's Woot shirt wasn't sold out.
Posted by brojack17 (Member # 9189) on :
I can't imagine anyone who thinks celebrities are heroes. In fact, most people just like to insult them. I respect good actors, such as Jimmy Stewart, Tom Hanks, etc. but I don't consider them heroes. I consider great thinkers heroes.
Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Kind of sad actually. Stephen Colbert had Jim Lovell (leader of the Apollo 13 crew) on his show tonight and I think he was right when he said he had a better childhood than his kids did because his heroes were astronauts, and it was exciting, whereas heroes now are celebrities.
No, everyone's heroes were celebrities; back then, astronauts were celebrities.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
Now they are nutters. I hold up as my example Lisa Nowak.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Noemon: I have hopes that with China and India beginning to reach for the stars there'll be a new, 21st century space race. I would really like the US to be a part of it, but ultimately I just want humanity to do this.
We will be. China wants to start carving up the moon, and India will join in with that. The US won't sit idly by while they do that, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's why Pres. Bush is pushing for a Moon base before we go to Mars in the face of most experts saying going to the Moon would actually slow us down with no real help to get to Mars. Perhaps he's backdooring it because otherwise it'd be hard to secure funding for a moon base to secure possible fuel for fusion reactors? Who knows.
Either way, if China and India head into space, you can bet we'll either follow or leapfrog them.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
I'd simply let China and India have the moon, I'd make the provision though that they are not allowed to touch the flag we setup there nor the billions of dollars of riches we buried beneath it in case Russia had started a nuclear holocaust. If they come within 10 feet of the flag we launch nukes at the moon.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Can't let them have it. If we ever do create fusion power the way we want, they'd have a monopoly on priceless resource: Helium-3. We barely have any on Earth, but it's thought to exist in vast quantities up there.
Much like the north pole, we have to get in there and stake our claim.