Quote:
Originally posted by Wu Lung
There's oil on the moon?
Seriously although another moon landing is all well and good (and great PR), money is better spent at the orbital level. The shuttles are woefully out of date (and completely ill- suited for moon operation) and are responsibly for all satellite repair, a decent amount of launchs and a whole lot of scientific reasearch. Revamping those and making the primary goal and functional (and useful) space station would be money better spent long term.
But nowhere near as flashy and 2004 is an election year after all....
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The shuttle needs to be replaced. It's a proof of concept vehicle that's been proving the concept for 20+ years. In short, it was meant as a test bed and some bureaucratic idiots decided the concept vehicle would be fine, totally unchanged. Well 50% of the original fleet has been destroyed. It's time for a new space plane.
I also disagree that our goal should be earth orbit. We're already doing that and not getting much out of it - at least, not from the manned part of it. We need to establish a base on the moon. The space station is cool and everything, but it's basically an orbiting paperweight, and it takes a lot of time, money, and effort to add one tiny piece to it.
Build a base on the moon and things change drastically. We can add a manufacturing module. Then build the rest of the base from there. We can launch deep space probes/ships from the moon. Now we don't have to make them any specific size to fit in a payload bay, and we don't have to expend absurd amounts of fuel just to get off the earth. The moon SHOULD be our goal, and if I really thought Bush felt that way I'd be applauding him. I however agree with the others that say it's a bunch of BS to sound nice before an election.
After all, in 1961, Kennedy said we were going to the moon. This was in a time when we could barely get into orbit - it was after all only 20 days after Alan Shepard became the first American in space. 8 years and 2 months later, we were on the moon, having discovered nearly everything about getting there from the ground up in those 8 years.
So why the hell, since we already know how to get there, would it take 14 years to do it? That's just dumb, and puts the goal far enough away from Bush's presidency that he doesn't have to actually do anything to live up to his word.