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Haven't had a chance to visit the space center in Florida so far this century, and vacationing just a little way away, I though I would toddle over to have a look. I remembered my visits over the years. Visits where the optimism and adventurous spirit of the place just seemed to ooze into you as you stayed around. Where you caught on to the whole attitude that the astronauts claim of being harbingers of a new way for humanity to view itself, without national differences and with all united in common cause to create a better world for humanity, as they blaze the path to living on other planets.

This visit was bittersweet to me. Because no matter how much they displayed regarding their new Orion space vehicle and their preparations for the Ares launch vehicle, all the optimism they expressed about their future is now only too obviously misplaced.

NASA has been starved of design/development money for decades, unable to replace the shuttles when they had originally planned to. Now, they are talking about their "mandate" to return people to the Moon -- a mandate that never got properly funded, and now has pretty much zero chance of truly getting under way. All these people are working on borrowed time. They will barely be able to keep the frickin' space station up for the coming decade. Beyond that, I expect very few humans to go to space any more. We will be fighting for our financial survival as a nation, just as Russia has done and is doing.

Maybe China will own the Moon one day. But us -- we will be paying the penalty for Bush's folly in Iraq and Reagan's legacy for the rest of our life as a nation.

So I left the hopes and triumphs of NASA behind. I felt like crying. That wondrous dream is now denied, I believe. Which totally blows. We could have done so much more.......

Wow...

I'm (supposedly) flying to Dallas here in a few, would love to swing down to Houston... not sure if they do the visitor thing anymore....

NASA at Houston is a bit boring. Especially compared wtih Kennedy Space Center. Houston just has control rooms and a rocket park - and fire ants. Kennedy has all the cool stuff, plus the alligators, bald eagles, osprey and armadillos.

If you know someone and can get a tour of the astronaut training areas it's a lot more interesting, but that's not part of the public tour.

It would be tragic if Kennedy became just a museum.

Tragic, and sadly pretty much inevitable at this stage. Unless someone comes up with a way to raise 10 or 12 trillion to hand over to the government real quick.

Maybe the government should start playing the European lotto?

A metaphor for the entire space program

So are they keeping the fact that alien bodies are being stored at area 51 from Obama, or does he know and just not care?

He knows

I thought that was the face she made after realizing someone found a sex tape of herself and John Edwards?

As I expected, the return to the Moon has been officially trashed. Thank you for NOTHING, Dubya.

It was dead at conception. Another one of those grandiose announcements where realistic funding was ignored or pushed into a future president's term.

A Person wrote:It was dead at conception. Another one of those grandiose announcements where realistic funding was ignored or pushed into a future president's term.

I knew it was bull when I heard it. Exactly the same as when Nixon declared hid "goal" of making the US energy-independent within 20 years -- in the middle of the impending oil crisis. I knew it was a toothless pipedream that would NEVER HAPPEN. But at least it was nice to dream about the possibilities... hope that some future president could pull things out of the tailspin in time to make it really happen.

Just so damn sad.

Let's face it... Obama and space don't mix... of all the things I like about the man, this is one of those things I just have to bite my tongue at.

I don't know why you would say that. Had Obama succeeded Clinton and took over a healthy budget surplus instead of a huge budget deficit he might well be inclined to pursue a commie agenda of supporting a space program. As it is, unfortunately the 'return-to-the-moon' program is discretionary and very expensive. It would be politically very difficult.


The 'return-to-the-moon' program was poorly conceived and unfunded from the start - par for the course really.

A Person wrote:I don't know why you would say that. Had Obama succeeded Clinton and took over a healthy budget surplus instead of a huge budget deficit he might well be inclined to pursue a commie agenda of supporting a space program. As it is, unfortunately the 'return-to-the-moon' program is discretionary and very expensive. It would be politically very difficult.


The 'return-to-the-moon' program was poorly conceived and unfunded from the start - par for the course really.

Agreed on all points. It was very sad to see how all the folks at the visitor center were 100% behind the idea of going to the Moon for permanent settlement. They were living in a sweet dream world that I would have wished could come true myself. So I didn't have the heart to even try to burst their little bubble.

I say that, because despite our financial situation, I consider the space program a priority. Health Care, Gay Rights, then Space.... Replace that pesky war stuff and I'll be happy. If our purpose here on earth isn't to discover I don't know what it is. The whole state of NASA leaves me upset personally. I may never get to go to space, but I want to feel apart of a country, part of a larger group who reaches out into something greater than themselves. The space program is a metaphor for the American culture, a dried up, outdated mis-match of ideas and things which peaked about 30 years ago.

Liv wrote:Replace that pesky war stuff and I'll be happy.

I have on one of my CDs in my car John Lennon's song "Happy Christmas (War is Over)." It drives me crazy listening to it. I consider it one of the primary tragedies of the human race that we can't find a way with all our combined abilities to put an end to war and dedicate all the resources we waste in that toward making the world better. I think that nearly every human in the world would say they don't like war... but we never seem to lack for people willing to participate.

Well I would think the idea of us destroying our world, and finding a new one might be of some importance.

Liv wrote:Well I would think the idea of us destroying our world, and finding a new one might be of some importance.

If we can't keep from destoying the world we have now what makes you think we won't destroy any new ones we might find?

BecauseHeLives wrote:

Liv wrote:Well I would think the idea of us destroying our world, and finding a new one might be of some importance.

If we can't keep from destoying the world we have now what makes you think we won't destroy any new ones we might find?

Good point... we've invented disposable planets.

Liv wrote:Well I would think the idea of us destroying our world, and finding a new one might be of some importance.

If we screw up this one, why should we bother finding a new one to screw up as well? Haven't we done enough?

SouthernFriedInfidel wrote:

Liv wrote:Well I would think the idea of us destroying our world, and finding a new one might be of some importance.

If we screw up this one, why should we bother finding a new one to screw up as well? Haven't we done enough?

Why give health-care to smokers... they're only going to do it again.

Liv wrote:

SouthernFriedInfidel wrote:If we screw up this one, why should we bother finding a new one to screw up as well? Haven't we done enough?

Why give health-care to smokers... they're only going to do it again.

Does seem less than fully cost-effective, doesn't it?

I'm sure we'll cross that bridge eventually... and that we'll only let tree-huggers emigrate to new, pristine worlds. Keep the planet-rapers on one place and watch them like a hawk.

Look, I say we spend every dime to find another planet.... and all those interested in universal health care, civil liberties, and can handle having a black president get to move there..... all the republicans who wish to drive around in their SUVs believing global warming isn't true can stay here.

That works for me. Can't be worse than what we have here...

Liv wrote:Look, I say we spend every dime to find another planet.... and all those interested in universal health care, civil liberties, and can handle having a black president get to move there..... all the republicans who wish to drive around in their SUVs believing global warming isn't true can stay here.

I like the idea but of course there are plenty of maybe insurmountable hurdles. First, besides funding and the will to "go there", we would need to find a close, habitable planet. The reason being, the star nearest us, Proxima Centauri, is over 4 lights years distant. Someone check my math here, but I believe even if we had a ship capable of speeds of 10,000 KPH we'd still need 4 million years for the trip. I've read ideas about generation ships but at these distances and time scales, the meaning for the mission would probably be lost in several generations. And of course a generation ship may never reach its destination before its builder's descendants develop ships with speeds fast enough to actually reach the target system before the generation ship, therefore negating any reason for sending the ship, other than having a flying museum staffed by anachronistic people. (On the other, what boon that would be to historians.)

Putting men on the Moon was great, but it was a political venture with a bit of science thrown in. Since then, human space flight has been a mixture of public relations, political maneuvering with again a sprinkling of science, and not much of it that couldn't be produced on Earth or by automation. There's much to be said about the emotional reasons for having humans in space but there aren't currently many practical ones. I think in a few generations, if we've survived without returning to barbarism, we'll have mapped the the solar system to the point that we'll have a reasonable idea of which places we can visit in person, which places actually need humans for a proper exploration and where we may possibly live. And isn't the latter reason the goal most of us have in mind: a repository for the species in case we destroy our home world?