Well, aren’t you the clever feller, Spiro…I don’t think I’ve ever run across that line of argument on these boards before.
[sigh.] Exploring the planet is one thing. Whooshing up, at enormous expense, to a dead-ass lump of rock in the sky (to take the materialist’s line) seems somehow different to me than looking for the Northwest Passage, or the source of the Nile. Unless you’re of the opinion that the lovely Moon Maids were gonna be waiting up there to hand out lemonade?
To take the poet’s line, we were being invasive of the virgin’s secrets. For no other reason than showing those darned Russkies that we could do it first.
So I take it we won’t be going to Mars (the “Masculine” God of War, after all) any time soon? At least, not until our culture gets over its widespread homophobia or until we can develop mission technology of a very different “look-and-feel?”
I won’t argue that point, JGS, I’m no Luddite (well, maybe a little). A well-planned exploration of space is a Good Thing. We could check out the Moon, go on to Venus and Mars, and beyond. Probably make a lot more sense to send cameras and robots rather than humans during the first go-round at least…cheaper, safer.
Dropping Neil and Buzz on the Moon in 1969, however, with minimal follow-up, was a Stunt.
>> Dropping Neil and Buzz on the Moon in 1969, however, with minimal follow-up, was a Stunt. <<
yeah, it was stunt. I was old enough to remember that first landing and then I was so surprised how fast interest in Apollo faded. NASA stayed with it for 6 more missions but the public dropped Apollo like a hot potato.
I was expecting moon bases and people on Mars by now. 2001: A Space Odyssey had me convinced it was going to be possible.
Cameras and robots were hardly sophisticated monitoring devices in the mid 1960’s whe the Apollo mididons were being planned and executed. Sometimes there really is no substitute for being there. (And sometimes even being there is not enough, since a certain subset of flatearthers still swear the moon landings were faked.) We went to the moon for a number of reasons, and, yes, I grant that national pride was certainly one of them, but categorizing it as “rape” strikes me as absurd.
As far as the moon landings being a “stunt”, that strikes me as an extremely dismissive term which fails in any sense to capture the spirit of the times or the motivations of the principals involved.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity
>>As far as the moon landings being a “stunt”, that strikes me as an extremely dismissive term which fails in any sense to capture the spirit of the times or the
motivations of the principals involved.<<
Excellent! Then I got it right. Sorry I disagree with you about the fine and altruistic motivations of the U.S. government.
Did I say fine or altruistic? I simply disagreed with frivolous and empty of serious intent (i.e willing to spend billions to finance a “stunt”). I personally disagree with a number of major items in teh federal budget, but that doesn’t mean I dismiss out of hand the earnesy of their supporters.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity
Humans as a whole had better find an alternative to Earth ASAP. Given the short history of our planet, I think it has been shown that nature can cast a catastrophic blow at moment’s notice. Earthquakes, asteroids, storms, not to mention our own damages just by our existence. I think we MUST seek to live on the moon, or any other planet or moon, just as a hedge against man’s total annhilation. This, I submit, is what drives us forward. I, for one, hope not to have to sit around and just wait for things to happen to us back here on Earth.
Are you suggesting, Uke, that if there had been more follow-ups it wouldn’t have been just a “stunt”?
You can call it what you want; I’ve always thought of it as being a major counterattack on the most visible battlefield of the Cold War. It had nothing to do with altruism – it had to do with wanting to prove the superiority of West over East. You may look back and laugh now, but thirty years ago it was taken extremely seriously.
The ‘tragedy’ of the cold-war mentality is that we derailed ongoing engineering that would have led to sustainable space exploration in favor of ‘quick and dirty’ methods that would get us up sooner, but without the ability to do much.
The U.S. X-plane program was in high gear when project Mercury came along, and it’s eventual goal was to build spacecraft that could achieve orbit and land again. The X-15 made it to the boundaries of space, and the pilots that flew it have astronaut’s wings. The next plane in the series was cancelled due to funding diversions to Mercury. That plane would have been the X-20, which would have been able to achieve orbit and land conventionally. In essense, a space shuttle, only much cheaper than NASA’s, and about 10 years earlier. The X program also was working on lifting bodies for re-entry, and all kinds of other technologies for maintaining a constant presence in space. All cancelled when NASA took over.
A lot of that original X-plane technology is now being used again. The Lockheed VentureStar SSTO uses lifting body technology, and was designed largely through use of the data collected on the X-plane flights. So perhaps now we’re back on track. It’s just that NASA took us on a 30-year detour.
