Charles, “Part Deux” is right: the US is going to go to the moon (again) to prove what, exactly? If NASA makes it to the moon (again), will that somehow prevent China from going to the moon? (And what about India?)
Your post reminded me that NASA “privatized” the ISS missions. As the Bloomberg article notes:
NASA faces a five-year gap between the retirement of the space shuttle in 2010 and the first launch of Orion, the six- person craft that will carry astronauts to the International Space Station and eventually the moon. Obama has said he would like to narrow that gap, during which the U.S. will pay Russia to ferry astronauts to the station.
While Russia is ferrying astronauts, Orbital and SpaceX will be ferrying cargo. I believe that, previously, private contractors built the rockets, but didn’t oversee the missions, whereas Orbital and SpaceX will now run the missions.
In regular lapses in common sense, pro-science people fail to connect federal spending on space missions with the warfare state (and isn’t Obama the peace candidate?). And now, they cheer this spending as a way to save the economy. Why don’t we pay these companies to buy a load of plasma TV’s and take them to space to float away?
4:55 pm on January 3, 2009
