"God is the Lord of angels and of men -- and of elves."
- J.R.R. Tolkien
Friday, January 29, 2010
Disclaimer: this is not a political post. It is just the lament of a bona-fide Apollo moon mission geek and all-around space-exploration nerd.
Planned NASA missions to the moon dropped from U.S. Budget
[The president's] 2011 budget, to be submitted to Congress on Monday, will propose abandoning a program to return US astronauts to the Moon, two Florida newspapers said.I know, I know. We're in a financial crisis. There are bigger fish to fry. We can't be blowing money to visit a lifeless rock 250,000 miles from us.
Citing administration and NASA officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the reports said the White House would call on the space agency to focus on other programs, including the development of commercial services to ferry US astronauts to the International Space Station.
Florida Today and the Orlando Sentinel, two papers based in the area around the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, said [the president] would seek to boost NASA's budget by six billion dollars over five years, despite a pledge to freeze most discretionary spending.
But the boost will fall far short of the money NASA needs to finance the Constellation program launched in 2004 by [the former president] after the space shuttle Columbia crash in 2003 effectively brought the shuttle program to a close.
But I still grieve. The moon missions of the late 1960s enchant me. The Apollo program was perhaps the greatest feat of human engineering and exploration in history.
It's enlightening to note that the views of the future presented in movies of the late sixties (such as 1968's 2001 A Space Odyssey) were not whimsical. People then just assumed that, of course, we would be visiting the outer planets in person by the beginning of the next millennium. Instead, we've been stuck in low earth orbit since Apollo 17 lifted off from the moon in late 1972.
I was really looking forward to going back to the moon. At this point, I'm betting we don't go back in my lifetime, if ever. And I think that's a loss for our country.
Trackbacks:
Trackback URL: http://thinklings.org/bloo.trackback.php/5793.
Comments on "Man!":
3. Andrew
- 01/29/2010 5:15 pm CST
On NPR yesterday, they reported that the United States and Russia were both running more serious tests in preparation for a possible Mars mission in the future. We might not go back to the Moon any time soon, but maybe Mars.
6. Why Not
- 01/29/2010 5:43 pm CST
Hold on to your moon rocks, they may be worth something...some day.
7. stroke
- 01/29/2010 6:17 pm CST
will this tide you over until then? http://redbullstratos.com/
not quite a moon mission, but still kinda cool.
8. Brian in Fresno
- 01/29/2010 7:06 pm CST
Stroke, thanks for the link! I heard about this effort about a week ago. I'm seriously looking forward to it and wait anxiously for it! I was in grade school when I read about Capt. Joe Kittenger.
We still need people on the Moon though.
9. Scott
- 01/29/2010 9:12 pm CST
The same article says that the administration has instructed NASA to focus on earth science and climate change.
10. Scott Roche
- 01/30/2010 6:34 am CST
Okay so Devil's advocate here, why do we "need" people on the moon?
11. Bill
- 01/30/2010 8:05 am CST
Great question, Scott. The answer (my opinion) is that we won't know until we do it. When JFK challenged America in 1962 to go to the moon, no one really knew all the technological advances that would spring from that program. There's an argument to be made that the environmental movement got a huge boost from the pictures of the whole earth (the "blue marble") hanging in space, so fragile. I also wonder if the moon was part of our plans to go to Mars (I can't remember if it was a stepping off point or not),
But for many people it seems very impractical, and maybe it is. It's hard to quantify and value the spirit of exploration and adventure, especially at a cost of billions in taxpayer dollars.
I still wish we were going back.
12. Scott Roche
- 01/30/2010 9:38 am CST
See to me that all makes a good deal of sense and I don't want to see the budget slashed (any more than it already has been). In fact I'd love to see them spend the kind of money we have spent in the Middle East (that very money in fact), but that's just the Dove-y Democrat in me.
13. Brian in Fresno
- 01/30/2010 11:46 am CST
We need people back on the Moon for the R&D that goes into such a program. The idea was that the Moon would be a step stone to Mars. We need incentive for huge R&D monies. We won't spend the money unless we have to spend it to accomplish something. I do think it is way too early to tell what advances we have gained from low Earth orbit science projects.
14. Brian in Fresno
- 01/30/2010 11:47 am CST
Also if we are going to continue science in low Earth orbit we need at least one new shuttle preferably two.
15. Shrode
- 01/31/2010 2:26 pm CST
I'm disappointed too.
Hey, didn't I predict this? :-(
Maybe Mars one day?
Or maybe the next president, will reverse this decision yet again? I sure would like to see it in my lifetime. I've been hopeful that my kids would see someone land on Mars. Sigh.
16. Joe
- 02/01/2010 8:39 am CST
I'm disappointed too. In general, I'm against government spending, especially of large amounts of taxpayer money for questionable objectives. But I think this is the kind of government spending that can be worthwhile. It inspires dreams and brings opportunities where private effort is less likely to occur.
I still think W's redirection of NASA's goals was one of the best moves of his presidency, and wouldn't doubt if this is an attempt by the "One" to take away some of W's legacy. I may be reading too much of my own views into that, but that's where I'm at.
I've also said something to the effect that I'd rather our government squander our money on a questionable attempt to reach a difficult but achievable technical goal, than to have them squander it on some social re-engineering project such as the "War on Poverty" or Socialized Medicine that will be more likely to hasten the decline of (what remains of) our American heritage.
Leave a Comment:
On a more hopeful note, I think some other country will go to the moon at some point over the next couple of decades. I just don't know that the U.S. will.