This happened.
Posted on 12/27/2013 10:22:50 AM PST by luke1825
There used to be Americans up there.
The thought came to me on a dark, predawn morning when I looked out the cold window at the bright and shining moon.
The Chinese have landed.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade," President John F. Kennedy said in 1962 when he launched the Apollo moon program, "and do other things, not because they are easy, because they are hard." He called it "the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history." And so it was.
What happened? We used to "own" the moon. What happened to the Americans? Where did the American astronauts go?
Read more: http://www.lowellsun.com/peterlucas/ci_24801035/peter-lucas-u-s-program-lost-space#ixzz2ohMMe8xk
(Excerpt) Read more at lowellsun.com ...
I took a tour of Johnson Space Center in Houston back in August. It’s just a decaying museum of what was once a manned space program. They were touting some Mars mission, which we were told would launch sometime in the 2030-2035 time frame. When the speaker was done, he asked for questions and I piped up with “what you’re telling me is the astronauts for this mission are in elementary school right now?” He didn’t like it, but it did kind of put it in perspective.
They aren’t going to Mars and they know it.
Takes Billion$ to keep the moron and bastard factories running, 3 shifts, 24/7...And the production “workers” comfortable, cranking out pliable Demo-Rat voters...
Can’t afford a real space program...Many more votes to be secured from the public welfare constituencies than from space exploration...
Too bad for the human race, and our once-promising attempts at outward expansion...Enough humans getting off this still beautiful but all-but-lost rock and establishing permanently elsewhere in the solar system and beyond was our best hope of survival as a species...
muslim outreach. driving remote controlled cars on mars.that’s our space program.
They are pursuing more humanitarian careers as ObamaCare Navigators. :)
We allowed the Democrats to destroy America through bogus welfare wealth redistribution programs. Now instead of going to the moon what remains of American excellence is sucked down supporting cockroaches.
This happened.
Perfect example of how far America has fallen.
Can’t be that bad. Every day I see another thread on what we should be paying for next.
Our unmanned space program is nothing to sneeze at. We’re also on the verge of private space travel, which is how it should be. There is still a ton to explore right here on planet earth. The moon is kind of a “been there, done that,” with China sniffing the leftovers decades later.
Money for the manned space program should be put into power plants manned by able-bodied-do-nothing recipients of welfare who can pedal up dynamos, power the rest of us, and generate additional consumables like beer and whiskey.
Agreed there are private concerns involved in space exploration, but like any other business, they will sell there services to the highest bidder, which now means China. It grieves me to say that I expect neither myself or my children will live to see a manned American space launch.
“which now means China” That is just not true. Chin up. And space launches aren’t government sponsored theater. Americans will be riding SpaceShipTwo. Count on it.
Ha! Calling what Virgin Galactic is doing "spaceflight" is like calling floating in Boston Harbor in a dinghy an "ocean voyage."
You have no idea what you are talking about. Gummint manned spaceflight took years to build. Ditto for what Scaled Composites is doing. Only they’re doing it without the taxpayers footing the bill. Personally I have 8 years experience working in manned spaceflight. Another 10 in payloads. Yourself?
You want to see private spaceflight, go look at what SpaceX is doing with their Dragon capsule. Only that's not quite so private either because it's development is still being funded by the US Government, and their ulitmate goal is to win contracts from the US Government to fly cargo and astronauts.
Using that criteria, since Grumman designed and built the Apollo Lunar Excursion Module (under government contract,) you could say that the moon landings were private as well.
The one good thing I can can say about SpaceShipOne and the follow on SpaceShipTwo is that they both were privately funded.
Can you tell the difference between a customer buying a product that is designed by a private firm on its own nickel and a design paid for by the gummint? Apparently not. Grumman could not sell Apollo to anyone who had the bux. Not the same case with Dragon. That is a significant difference in my book. SpaceX sells to many customers btw, not just gummints. As for Scaled Composites, they’re on a path to commercial orbital flight. One step at a time.
Yes, yes I can. Can you tell the difference? SpaceX was awarded a $278 million contract in 2006 to develop the Dragon capsule. Is that a private firm's own nickel?
The Chinese sent a surface probe. That puts them almost forty years behind the mostly-defunct USSR, which put a robotic rover on the surface after we terminated Apollo.
It also puts the Chinese, Russia, and every other nation on Earth 41 years and counting behind our *most recent* manned mission to the surface of the Moon.
Thanks luke1825, extra to APoD.
They also don’t have to do 40 years of research to catch up.
If they own the intellectual property (i.e. the design), and they do, then yes its private. Or is that too hard for you to understand? Customers? Gummints (plural) AND private. Both. More of the private coming soon. Look at their launch manifest. http://www.spacex.com/missions The gummint was Christopher Columbus first customer. Then others got in the biz. And manned spaceflight takes a bunch of bux to pay for Buck Rogers. Hell of a lot more man-years than building a sailboat.
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