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Back to the Moon... maybe
Jan. 15th, 2004 09:46 amSo Bush Jr. has put forth a plan to send human back to the Moon, and beyond http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nasa-04b.html
I find myself wanting to gouge my eyes out for saying this, but its probably the first thing that Bush has done in his lunatic asylum of an administration that I agree with. The plan he set forth is ambitious, but it's not totally pie-in-the-sky, and it aknowledges that we going to have to actually build an infrastructure up in orbit and on the Moon if we're going to do any serious manned exploration of the Solar System.
That said, I think the timetable and budget his proposing for all of this is ridiculously optimistic and underfunded respectively. A date of 2014 to start flying around in the followup to the Space Shuttle seems wildly optimistic, given the time its taken to get craft like the F-22 or the JSF into production, which operate in an environment nowhere near as hostile as space. And upping NASA's budget by a paltry $1 billion a year isn't going to cut the mustard, even if we do retire those godawful Shuttles.
I hope it all works out like Bush claims it will, but I'm not holding my breath.
I find myself wanting to gouge my eyes out for saying this, but its probably the first thing that Bush has done in his lunatic asylum of an administration that I agree with. The plan he set forth is ambitious, but it's not totally pie-in-the-sky, and it aknowledges that we going to have to actually build an infrastructure up in orbit and on the Moon if we're going to do any serious manned exploration of the Solar System.
That said, I think the timetable and budget his proposing for all of this is ridiculously optimistic and underfunded respectively. A date of 2014 to start flying around in the followup to the Space Shuttle seems wildly optimistic, given the time its taken to get craft like the F-22 or the JSF into production, which operate in an environment nowhere near as hostile as space. And upping NASA's budget by a paltry $1 billion a year isn't going to cut the mustard, even if we do retire those godawful Shuttles.
I hope it all works out like Bush claims it will, but I'm not holding my breath.
