At the time this blog is being written NASA’s spacecraft Orion is orbiting the moon. Congratulations NASA. They’ve finally duplicated 1960’s exploits. Unlike the Apollo days the plan is to continue forward and actually establish a presence. They also hope to do it this decade. That would be different.
I’m old enough to remember the moon landing. Kids in those days really thought we had a chance to someday work and live in space. You can imagine how disappointing the following decades turned out to be.
The space shuttle was pretty cool, but it was never the “space truck” that was going to make space travel affordable. Too many compromises were made along the way. However, I am glad I was able to see one of the last shuttle flights before they shut down the program. It was an impressive thing to see and feel.
This time around it actually looks like government/private business partnerships are paying off. That might actually be the special sauce that moves mankind off our big blue rock. The current NASA program is a throwback to the old ways of doing things. It will probably turn out to be a footnote in History. Even NASA will need lander from SpaceX to make things work.
All in all, I’m glad we are going back -even if I’m too old to live the dream.
-Sixbears
Till we start putting people on the moon....and safely bringing them back....NASA has NOT duplicated what they did more than half a century ago. Sending remote probes to just orbit the moon is several magnitudes of difficulty less than manned missions.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first man capable mission in an extra special long time.
DeleteThis is the first of many. The dummies will be replaced with other, "dummies."
DeleteI really thought that by now we would be mining the asteroids for their wealth, and have our most noxious factories in space. I thought I'd be working on the moon or Mars (or the moon's of Mars) for most of my career. Very sad none of it came to be. Instead we have Facebook.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't seem like a fair trade to me.
DeleteThe reality of space travel is that it will never be common unless/until we find a way to climb out of this deep gravity well that is more efficient than climbing on top of giant roman candles and hoping it doesn't blow up. To get cargo into low earth orbit requires a machine that is about 90% fuel. NOT an efficient or cost effective way to travel. And as long as we can ONLY get off earth using chemical powered rockets travel through outer space will NOT be common.
ReplyDeleteDarn physics, always getting in the way.
DeleteThat has been done. I speak of Sir Richard and his "Aerospace" plane. It was capable of flying out further, then there's Elon's fancy craft. Turns out slowly approaching gets you there as well. Unless you're real keen on going 24 thousand mile an hour. That's the approx. escape velocity.
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