June 9th, 2006 by The Bosphorus
I won’t be posting for the next few days (yeah, I know that may come as some surprise), but I thought I’d leave you all with this news. Looks like we’re headed back to the moon. Well, in about six or seven years.
Engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center will oversee the development of NASA’s next-generation lunar rocket, a companion cargo rocket and a new lunar lander, officials said Monday.
The project is dubbed “Constellation.”
I wonder if we’ll be out of Iraq by then?
June 9th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
Out of Iraq? Where do you think we’ll be launching from? (afterall, they’ve got the fuel)
June 10th, 2006 at 7:55 am
“I wonder if we’ll be out of Iraq by then?”
Since the US military is currently building permanent bases in Iraq, no.
http://www.fcnl.org/iraq/bases.htm
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/23755/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1490063,00.html
June 11th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
Dude, we won’t be out of Iraq period. Its a handy middle east base.
June 12th, 2006 at 6:19 am
From the Saturday NYT:
“Mr. Bush on Friday made clear that the American commitment to the country will be long-term. Officials say the administration has begun to look at the costs of maintaining a force of roughly 50,000 troops there for years to come, roughly the size of the American presence maintained in the Philippines and Korea for decades after those conflicts.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/world/middleeast/11summit.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
June 12th, 2006 at 11:18 am
I speculate that we go to the moon because the president thinks it is largely made of cheese (i mean he was told, he doesn’t really think does he?). just image all that cheese. you know cheese is good.
(if you like happy endings stop reading here)
I see no reason to goto the moon except to fund large scale contractors and big government. Anything that’s worth going to the moon for (in theory Helium-3), at present, we produce here for less money and certainly less risk. There are big problems here on earth and in the US that are practically ignored. It’s like driving on a flat tire. Yes, yes, it is common sense. This whole moon thing is just another distraction from distractions that will be cut in three years when the monkey-in-cheif is done hand waving about how great his ideas are.
June 12th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
I disagree, Mojo, and I’ll tell you why.
I think that if the whole space thing was done with the gusto that we had in the 50s and 60s (take that, commies) then we’d have more people stationed outside earth. As it is now, we have a token presence in a station, and whoopie, I saw that when it came out the first time and was called Spacelab (take that, Austrailia!).
Unfortunately, science fiction has seemingly doomed space habitation to more of the fictioney side of it, rather than the sciency side. Thats a problem, because right now we have all of our eggs in one big basket, and I’d sure feel better for the human race if we bought an extra basket. Sure, this is all for corporate and goverment interest, but unfortunately thats going to be the only groups with the resources to shoot the moon.
And yes, if its done right, it’ll usher in a new age of indentured servitude, but I think it’ll be worth it.
And, I totally did this post back in October, but its lost to the great server crash. But heres the picture that I did…
June 13th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
People in space is wasted cash at this time. Advancements in materials and technology will be the only way to make getting into space cost efficient, if ever. I really doubt that being stationed outside the earth is something that people would really be excited about if they tried it for a while. There is little to do with the vastness of space that can’t be done here, with the exception of lack of gravity. Not to mention that space is really bad for your health, radiation-wise. If we really want to throw loads of money at something why not mag lev trains or an awesome public transportation system, healthcare for everyone, solar cells, trained monkeys, carbon scubbers, cancer research, the mojofilter foundation, EDUCATION, poverty, laser light shows, a utopian society, art, science, research, food supply, technology, ending fosil fuel use, curing diseases, stopping deforestation, ect. and put an end to human stupidity. There is NOTHING useful in space other than solar energy and nice views. On planets there maybe useful elements, but nothing that we don’t have here on earth.
the mojofilter foundation now accepts paypal.
June 13th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
See, thats the attitude thats prevalent (except for in the government, where resources tend to go to the proliferation of power and money), but thats exactly the problem.
Could be I’m wrong, but even if there ISN’T a comet or mutant death virus coming, the fact that population is trending upward is bound to be a problem, and theres not much more good real estate left on this rock. I mean, I guess you could hope for that mega death virus of doom, but thats not very optimistic.
I think that, once the idea is seized upon, it’ll take generations to get to the point where self sustaining habitats are available off world, but the clock doesn’t start running until the idea is taken seriously. How many more centuries of this kind of progress can this dump of a planet hold out on?