Quote:Sigh... I know what you mean.
I'm not sad.
I'm furious.
Back in the 70s and 80s as a kid I could still dream that we'd have a Moonbase or classic "wheel" space station in orbit by the end of the century or maybe the early 2000s that would be the basis for other expeditions. Maybe if I couldn't be an astronaut, then maybe by the time it was time for me to retire, then I might have enough money to take a short hop on the Pan Am shuttle to the station to be able to see the Earth from orbit. Not anymore... I know now that I'll eventually die without ever taking one step beyond Earth's atmosphere.
I remember Gene Cernan talking about how nowadays it almost seems like we somehow managed to pluck a decade from the 21st Century and shoehorn it into the 1960s.
It's maddening. NASA was practically given carte blanche in the 60s because of the whole "beat the Russians" thing politically. They had their glory days when they really deserved praise, and I'm a huge fan of that era. And if the NASA of that era still existed, I'd be a fan still.
But in the end they had their funding cut to shreds and turned into just another government bureaucracy. And one that's having to get by on a relative shoestring compared to what it would REALLY cost to do the job properly.
I really hold out hope for Burt Rutan and Scaled Composites in their bid to make space tourism and launch-to-orbit something that private enterprise can and will do. They seem to have the creativity and funding to really make a go of this. Any program that doesn't depend on a fickle congress for its funding may have an advantage.
And maybe a film like Man Conquers Space might remind people of the space dream. Remind them that all of that can be had RIGHT NOW if we just make the commitment.
-Logan
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"Wake up! Time for SCIENCE!"
-Adam Savage
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