Where we COULD have ended up

[SouthernFriedInfidel]

Anyone recall the early 70s? We were still landing on the Moon, NASA was getting set to build a space shuttle, one that would allow us to fly to space as often as we fly in jets... and the eggheads at Ames Research Center were given the task of sketching out what might be done to create long-term living environments in space.

Here are some of the artist renderings that came out of that blue-sky project:






I view these ideas rather wistfully, because beside the horrifying technical and engineering problems that would go into actually BUILDING this stuff, I wonder about humanity's economic and budgetary priorities.

We have spent the 40 years since these images were made in countless wars, every country on EARTH spending every spare dime to create and maintain the most powerful military organizations they could afford. Had the countries all decided to stop this insane, wasteful squabbling and channeled all that wealth into these projects, could they have been accomplished? Probably not. On the other hand... life would undoubtedly have ended up by now being far better for nearly everyone...

Everyone but the Rupert Murdochs, Rush Limbaughs and Sarah Palins of the modern world.

[Liv]

I'm not so sure we could have built colonies elsewhere even if we still had a capable program, but you know my opinion, we definitely need to bring back the space program, like, yesterday.

An American without a space program is like a Christian without a Christ.