Re: We, first loosers for 100 years.

"Pat Flannery" <flanner@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:127e8ofmpc31u52@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Voyagers 1 and 2 returned far more interesting scientific data than Apollo
ever did.
Same goes for Hubble.


Interesting to who? The Apollo program brought about entire new fields of
technology. Compared to the scale of engineering represented by manned
missions, the robot missions are toys.

Of course, one of the big differences between today and back then was that
people dreamed really BIG dreams back then.


The really big dream being to put people on the Moon before the Soviets
did.
After that was accomplished, we realized that when you get right down to
it the Moon is a pretty boring, expensive, and largely useless place to
go.

Same can be said for Vegas, but lots of people still want to go there. Of
course, there's no gambling, booze, or prostitution on the moon (at least,
not yet).


Of course, one big difference between us and the Romans is that the Romans
never had to import engineers from third-world countries because not
enough of thier own kids were interested in math and science.


Actual mathematicians in ancient Rome were probably few and far between.
The ones the did have were largely Greek, as the Greeks were admired
(somewhat- they were also looked on a bit as having their heads in the
clouds) for intellectual, artistic, and scientific endeavors.
Were Rome really shown was in the caliber of its practical engineers; the
didn't spend their time working out obscure mathematical formula, the
figured out how exactly to build things that were very strong and durable.

Wow, enlightening, off-topic, and completely useless all at the same time.

My reference to Rome came from the previous poster, but the point is that
without SOMETHING to get the attention of the next generation of engineers
and scientists, we're going to end up dependent on foreign talent for the
most important skills of our day. I'm pretty sure the Romans never issued
huge numbers of H1B visas to ensure they had enough civil engineers to
maintain thier roads.

As expensive as the manned program was, it generated a lot of today's
scientists and engineers. You can send robots into the heart of hell itself
and it's not going to stir the imagination of the young like the old films
of Ed White's spacewalk and Armstrong's small step.


You can't go to the moon by staying home. NASA has had 35 years to
answer those questions. We have years of data from Skylab, from Mir,
from Shuttle, from LDEF, and we do NOTHING with it. It's not a lack of
data. It's a lack of leadership, it's a lack of nerve, it's a lack of
vision, but it's NOT a lack of data.

It's the lack of any particularly good or pressing reason to go there.


This is EXACTLY why we need to get NASA out of the Shuttle Operations
business and into a role in which it's facilitating private investment and
development of space. It's not fair that people like you have thier tax
money diverted to programs you're not emotionally equipped to understand,
and it's not fair to people like me to have to keep explaining it. We need
to stop treating space like we're socialists and start looking at it like
capitalists - I for one want the opportunity to invest in the next wave of
space exploration.

Note the Chinese- are they sending people to the Moon ASAP?
No, the are building the world's largest hydroelectric dam.
Why? because it will serve many useful purposes, including controlling
flooding, producing hydroelectric power, and allowing cargo ships to
journey hundreds of miles inland.
Want to do something big and worthwhile?
That's the sort of project to think about, not going back to the Moon.

Question 1: Since when are the Chinese the guage for ANYTHING? They've
managed to combine the worst excesses of capitalism from the age of Dickens
and the worst of Communism from the age of Stalin, and we're going to follow
THEIR lead? I'd rather take cooking lessons from Jeffrey Dahlmer,
thankyouverymuch.

Question 2: When was the last hydroelectric dam built in North America? Try
building one today and you'll be nibbled to death by ducks faster than you
can say "Mount Grahm Red Squirrels eat Snail Darter sandwiches". When I say
we don't dare to dream big dreams anymore, I'm not just talking about space.
I just happen to like the idea of space travel because it will get me far,
far away from the Siera Club and all the other neo-Luddites.

We wouldn't have had anything in particular to launch with them; as the
only two things they were really good for was manned flights to the Moon,
and building a giant space station... and we've all now seen just how
pointless a giant space station is as far as generating anything really
worthwhile to people on Earth.


Well, I don't see the ISS as being "worthwhile to people on Earth" like
curbside recycling and Shakira videos, and it won't pick up trash on the
highways or make our armpits smell like petunias. But there does happen to
be an element of humanity that dreams of living on the frontier.

Any kind of realistic program is going to need large throw-weight vehicles.


Remember the glory days of "100 to 200 Shuttle flights per year"?
Ever notice that no one ever stated what exactly the 100 to 200 payloads
were to be? :-D


Get the cost of payloads down to the $10/lb, or even $100/lb range, and
people will come up with payloads. Problem is that the shuttle has never
managed to go below $10,000/lb.

Pat


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