They even built their replicas of the Cargo Planes!.............
Posted on 02/09/2010 12:15:31 PM PST by NonZeroSum
During World War II in the Pacific, many native tribes were astounded by their first contact with an advanced technological civilization, when the Americans would come in, clear a strip in the jungle, set up a control tower and loud giant silver birds would appear from the sky bearing canned food, trinkets, fuel and other supplies. After the war, the Americans went away for the most part, but the memories remained. Many of the natives, changed forever by the experience, decided to replicate it. They cleared their own strips, built control towers of thatch and palm, and waited for the silver birds to come back, providing again the manna from the heavens. Unfortunately, many in the space community engage in similar thinking, with a nostalgia for Apollo, when we had a "real space program."
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
unjustified you say. I guess we will have to agree to disagree.
They even built their replicas of the Cargo Planes!.............
There’s always a better way to reach a goal - let’s find it.
In black and white terms I don’t think there should be a role for the government in space outside of national security. However the space program is cool and it comforts me to know that every dollar spent on returning to the moon would be a dollar not buying food stamps.
But it's still a dollar taken by force from a taxpayer.
Unjustified?? Tell me one thing that qualifies Premier Hussein to comment professionally in any way about the space program, creating jobs, digging a ditch or even how to run a popsickle stand.
He is the least qualified guy in any room he enters.
Even worse-— it’s taken by force from taxpayers yet to be born.
So was the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Yeah I agree. My point is that I have a long list of programs to cry about before I get to the space program.
One time when the space shuttle blasted off to study global warming, I was looking at all the exhaust coming from the rear of the thing and thinking: “Just look behind you”!
I’m an engineer at NASA. I have been there for the decline of NASA over the past 20 years. NASA has gone from a space agency focused on R&D related to space exploration to a jobs program for people who can check the most minority status boxes (openly gay, Hispanic, one arm, females hired on the spot). NASA’s focus is now process (can hire more people who don’t have a clue as well as paperwork police - who don’t have a clue either). The focus is not good engineering. NASA is afraid of it’s own shadow as well. They won’t take any risks such as new vehicles to send people into space. “Safety is Our Number One Value” is now NASA’s slogan. The month of July (I believe) is set aside for “celebrating gay, transgendered, and bisexual peoples” with HUGE events scheduled weekly. The list goes on and on... Ugh!
It just proves good can come from bad.
If we hadn’t stopped after the Moon, we would have a base on Mars by now.
Program was not just the direct techs nor the spinoffs. But the inspiration to an entire generation of Engineers. Makes it tough to estimate how much tech would not have been developed had it not been for the Manned Space Program.
It has become a welfare program for bureaucrats, and not a haven for engineers and risk takers like it used to be.
Cargo Planes to Cargo Cults, feels like we are being ran by a Cargo Cult these days.... In that if we appease the god os socialism we can all live happily ever after....
It took an incredible amount of resources and ingenuity to get to the moon — going to Mars would be orders of magnitude tougher. I don’t know if we would “have a base on Mars by now,” but our space program would certainly be in much better shape than it is!
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