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talkpolitics
The last flight of the shuttle program is now underway, with several former astronauts expressing outrage over the current lack of vision in the American space program. The first American in space and former U.S. senator John Glenn noted: "Because the shuttle's going down," Glenn said, "we will not have our own means of getting into space which I think is too bad. I don't like this at all. We'll actually have to go over and have our people go up on Soyuz out of Kazakhstan with Russian launch vehicles - which I don't like. I don't think that's very seemly for the world greatest space faring nation as President Kennedy termed us." The shuttle program was originally meant as a replacement for canceled programs after the Apollo missions (e.g. more exploratory trips to the Moon with the establishment of bases there, and long lead planning and design for manned trips to Mars by the end of the century).
The chevron used for the last shuttle mission
As a kid, I remember watching nearly every Mercury and Apollo launch, it seemed like the good aspects of the future of Star Trek portrayed would come to fruition within my own lifetime. But I also distinctly remember that by the last two Apollo missions, the networks were already bored with it as a news story: there wasn't any live coverage of the missions (and there wasn't anything like CNN or 24 news back then). Sagan commented several times through out his career the story of Zheng He, the great Chinese explorer who ventured on great merchant ships as far as Cape Town, Africa, bringing back exotic animals such as the giraffe to the Ming emperor, but eventually the xenophobic and Confucian bureaucracy of the Chinese culture won the day: within 50 years, all large ships were destroyed, and laws were passed preventing any new construction. Later royal court officials tried to obscure any references to the trips and their discoveries. Carl Sagan in the last yeasr of his life, wondered out loud about the American commitment space exploration too, and our place among the stars. Here is Sagan's own feflection on the end of the manned missions to the Moon and waxes philosophical about the future. There is some beautiful footage used in this HD clip.
I'm saddened to see the end of the shuttle. I think it's such a shame that our manned space program has languished for so long. The Obama administration has stated its commitment to expanding NASA-- despite its favoring commercial sub-space aviation as the "wave of the future, but last week, a House subcommittee voted to cut 1 billion dollars, and canceled the James Webb space based telescope outright.
For more please see these resources:
[1.] Space program retools for the 21st century. Detailing the impact of the shuttle program on Southern California's aero-space industry, and details the incredible technical beauty and ingenuity of designing one of the world's most sophisticated machines.
[2.] President Kennedy's address to Congress on May 25, 1961, declaring his wish that we land men on the Moon by the end of the decade.
[3.] NASA's HD broadcasts are available over the Internet, and also provided free of charge to your local cable provider. If your system doesn't have it, request it! ;)
[4.] Absolute must see: When we left Earth, the Discovery Channel's documentary series that uses remastered films of the early space program including Mercury and Apollo missions in STUNNING high definition.
Tip o' the hat to
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
dwer who alerted me about the Sagan video clip via my Google + page ;)
(no subject)
Date: 10/7/11 21:53 (UTC)That would solve the debt problem.
(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 09:02 (UTC)Oops sorry, OT.
(no subject)
Date: 10/7/11 21:56 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 14:55 (UTC)For the sake of saying something, who/what do you see as the bigggest threat that we need to defend against? don't say terrorism unless you think you can get your heroin somewhere else than pakistan/afghanistan and don't say oil if you can get your petroleum somewhere else than the arabic peninsula. also don't say illegal immigrants if you're already building fences.
(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 15:22 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 15:28 (UTC)A long time ago I read a short story set in Larry Niven's Ringworld universe. It told of the first contact between humans and the Kzinti, a warrior race of tiger like humanoids who had also developed some limited telepathic abilities.
The story is told from the point of view of the Kzinti ship and the bulk of it is their telepath trying to divine the offensive capabilities of the human ship and for the longest time he can't. The reason he can't is it never occurred to the Kzinti that someone might intentionally go unarmed. However at this point in humanities existence they had eradicated war on their home world and not yet encountered a hostile alien race (although they had apparently heard rumors of the Kzinti). When he finally figures out that the earth ship is unarmed he tells the captain who immediately orders his ship in close for a boarding action. When they get close the earth ship suddenly swings around and points their engines right at the kzinti ship and fires them. Their engines happened to be essentially giant particle accelerators and vaporized the enemy ship.
The moral of the story is just because you don't have the biggest guns does not mean you are unarmed and EVERYTHING is a weapon when you need one. Developing cheap effective ground to orbit technology is a military technology as well as a scientific one and the two uses cannot be separated. As we have no immediate existential threat it makes far more sense for us to develop our technology along the "civilian" side of things because those "civilian" technologies can be turned to wartime use anytime we need them to.
This strategy would also create another advantage that is hinted at in that story. An enemy who knows what you have for military technology can plan for it and adapt their tactics to minimize your tech advantages. However, if you don't have any preset military base it becomes incredibly difficult for them to plan for because they don't know which of your civilian technologies will appear in your military equipment next.
(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 17:29 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10/7/11 22:11 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 01:18 (UTC)That Castile-Aragon conquered so much and governed most of a continent argues that centralization spurs empire, not halts it.
(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 01:41 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 17:25 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 17:51 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 21:08 (UTC)It's the end of the whirled as we know it.
Date: 10/7/11 22:33 (UTC)The Chinese expedition you mention came about as a result of the opening of China by the Mongol conquest. Once the Mongols were expelled, the Chinese started to revert to their traditional closure. A similar process occurred in the US where isolation gave way to internationalism. The US is now reverting to its traditional isolationist policy.
One of the things that sticks out most for me in my memory of the lunar landing program was how many people took flash photos of their TV sets when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. The general ineptitude in camera use presaged the current state of American imbecility.
(BTW, you failed to mention the Gemini missions in your nostalgia. How could you forget Gemini?)
Re: It's the end of the whirled as we know it.
Date: 10/7/11 22:37 (UTC)Re: It's the end of the whirled as we know it.
Date: 11/7/11 17:24 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 01:01 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 01:13 (UTC)I have hope.
Date: 11/7/11 01:07 (UTC)NASA may be on its way out but we haven't given up.
SPACEX could fly passengers and Cargo go to the ISS tomorrow (if they get approval), EXCOR and Virgin are both in the flight test stage, and it looks like Armadillo will be resurecting the old NASA/USAF DCX.
(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 01:15 (UTC)And the Apollo program was always part of the decades-long pissing contest between the USA and USSR, and was never anything beyond that. Fear of Soviet moon bases motivated the landings.
John Glenn Message to the Russians
Date: 11/7/11 01:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 14:57 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 15:17 (UTC)...was Alan Shepard, a huge hero of mine. John Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth.
(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 15:38 (UTC)The ship that carries your astronauts to space should not also be your primary space lab. It should be a truck. Rugged, effective, and unglamorous. A proper design of the space shuttle would not have provided more than 3 or 4 days of life support for a crew of 4 but been able to carry as many as 10. Then it should have had personnel modules that could be carried in the cargo bay and each launch could have either been a science mission, in which case the cargo bay would have contained a life support/science module, a construction mission, in which case it would have been a pure life support module, or a cargo launch mission, in which case it would have been the cargo and the crew would have just been 4.
Instead they tried to turn it into a catch all do everything ship and it really cost way too much.
Still it was really cool and did carry us between the end of Apollo and the start of the era where commercial space travel is viable and did so with distinction but it really has reached the end of it's life and it is high time that we stop glamorizing what should be a very mundane action of launching something into orbit and turn it into a dull boring commodity.
(no subject)
Date: 11/7/11 16:20 (UTC)As I understand, Sen. Glenn is severely mistaken, we do have the means to get back into space, well not at this very moment but it is being developed.