America won’t be repeating that historic one small step anytime soon — not according to NASA chief Charlie Bolden, anyway.
“NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime,” Bolden told a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington last week, according to Jeff Foust of SpacePolitics.com. “And the reason is, we can only do so many things.”
Instead, he said the focus would remain on human missions to asteroids and to Mars. “We intend to do that, and we think it can be done.” Meanwhile, interest in the moon has been growing in both the private sector and in foreign countries.
Last week, Russia rekindled its plans for a robotic moon exploration program, unveiling its first new moon mission since the Soviet Union launched Luna 24 in 1976. Russian space scientists are scripting a new plan to reconnect with the moon, one scientist explained.“Exploration of the moon is an important part of the program,” said Igor Mitrofanov of the Institute for Space Research during Microsymposium 54 on “Lunar Farside and Poles — New Destinations for Exploration,” held in The Woodlands, Texas, on March 16 and 17.
‘I just want to emphasize that Russia is a spacefaring country not only with the robotic but also manned flight,” he added.
Well, since we were the first to plant a flag, that means we own it, right? That reminds me of a stand up routine by Comedian Eddie Izzard.
So, yeah. There was a lot of that, and we built up empires – we stole countries! That’s what you do,that’s how you build an empire. We stole countries with the cunning use of flags! Yeah, just sail around the world and stick a flag in.
“I claim India for Britain!”
They go, “You can’t claim us, we live here! 500 million of us!”
“Do you have a flag?”
“We don’t need a bloody flag! It’s our country, you bastards!”
“No flag, no country, you can’t have one! That’s the rules that I’ve just made up, and I’m backing it up with this gun that was lent from the National Rifle Association.”
Eddie Izzard
That’s ok, China will do Manned lunar landings, 2025–2030.
During that time, they plan to televise their joy ride live in the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV form Apollo program 15, 16, and 17) after replacing its batteries. Then China will take a few photo opps after replacing the American flag with the People’s Republic of China Flag.
Rumor is they plan a permanent presence and will legally claim the abandoned moon as their own and militarize it to keep it.
They will wave to us, as we fly by on the way to Mars.
Rumor is they plan a permanent presence and will legally claim the abandoned moon as their own and militarize it to keep it.
By UN convention, the moon is supposed to stay de-militarized. (Though if North Korea was to go there, they’d march a million man army there in steampunk helmets and leather outfits, suckin’ vacuum, jumping up and down in front of a loud speaker, and wondering why everybody’s just laughing at them. [Loud speakers need air.])
They will wave to us, as we fly by on the way to Mars.
Nah, they’ll draw a bead on us and charge us for the privilege of going past.
SO WHY DO YOU THINK CHINA will HONOR a UN CONVENTION when America certainly wouldn’t!
American’s signature on treaties is worth SHIT!
American’s signature to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment is worth SHIT!
American’s signature to the UN drug conventions is worth SHIT! Relaxation of US cannabis laws violates UN drug conventions
American’s signature to the Geneva convention is worth SHIT!
American’s signature to Indian Treaties is worth SHIT and left a historical Trail of Broken Treaties.
Basically American’s international word on anything is WORTH SHIT!
Historically, the only thing America cares about is ensuring the RICH are getting RICHER, nothing more! We will fight like hell if American wealth is threatened; don’t tax me bro!
The only people who believe America has any moral authority are the indoctrinated and poorly educated wishful thinking Americans (99%).
You think any country really believes America has any moral authority, NO!
The only thing that enforces American treaty compliance is commensurate counter FORCE to our FORCE and not our SHITY worthless signature!
There is nothing at all you can trust about our Government! EVERY Government employee can lie, cheat and steal legally in the name of some American government policy or procedure as legalized by our Supreme Court!
Citizens know this, and why there is such a 2nd amendment public craze!
Do you understand ANYTHING?!
Do you even know what a CONVENTION is?!!!
All of our leaders and other “dignitaries” sign AGREEMENTS all the time with entities such as the U.N., other countries/leaders, and even other groups right here in the good old USA like Native Americans! You see these Washington elite dipshits all the time in the news signing these “agreements”, but the news fails miserably EVERY DAMN TIME to remind the mentally lazy people they are reporting to that the dipshit elitist making the news is just the START of the whole PROCESS.
The reason most of these AGREEMENTS turn to shit (as you call it) are due to CONGRESS not ratifying them. (That’s a fancy way to say that Congress either disapproves of the agreement or doesn’t care enough to even look at it.)
So if you gave a damn about ANYTHING then YOU would STOP repeatedly voting for the SAME STUPID CONGRESSMEN!
But good luck with that one. Because quite simply, the problem in America is that too many stupid voters are too lazy to educate themselves about the ISSUES or even the CANDIDATES! These idiot voters (usually of liberal persuasion) vote according to party lines thinking it’s just another episode of American Idol or something. And if you ask me, that sounds exactly like YOU!!!
Really, what drugs are you on? Your claiming self-intelligence by projecting you own failings on me?
“YOU would STOP repeatedly voting for the SAME STUPID CONGRESSMEN!”
How exactly do you think you know who I have and haven’t voted for?
Then, topping off your complete DUMBSHITness, you incorrectly claim America has not violated any agreement CONGRESS has ratified, WRONG!
You are half right, that a signature does not bind a nation unless the document has also been ratified by that nation!
The U.S. has ratified all the Geneva Conventions with the exception of the two protocols of 1977.
So your DUMBSHITness, why has the U.S. committed grave breaches to what it has ratified?
The U.S. is in grave breach of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions that include acts committed against a person protected by the convention:
• willful killing, torture or inhumane treatment!
Why do you think GWB is a coward twice over? 1st he was scared to serve in Vietnam and now is afraid to travel overseas!
Makes you wonder why we’ve never been back to the moon. And you’d think another country would have done it just to prove they can.
I heard from a NASA source that they can’t solve the atrophy problem, for long periods without gravity. Bone & muscle just waste away and exercise without gravity doesn’t help. A personed trip to Mars would be one way. If they weren’t crushed by the gravity when they got there, they’d never make it back to Earth.
-end of NASA source-
NASA says this all the time – they won’t go unless they’re certain they can bring them back. That’s why their budget got slashed. There’s no good news human interest angle.
They can’t admit they have secret technologies. That’s the property of the world government, which will never be revealed. Never. Exposes too many lies. Public trust would be lost and the matrix would collapse. So NASA is publicly at a dead end. Literally. Hence, the robots. That tweet. Sad.
Best explanation I’ve heard is that if we did actually get to the moon, it was for an entirely different purpose than stated publicly. Sea of Tranquility was a hotbed of unexplained lights a month before the landing. It’s pretty clear that stuff we saw on TV was shot here in slowmo.
Iron Sky brimming with NA memes. Watch it.
“It’s pretty clear that stuff we saw on TV was shot here in slowmo.”
har!
There probably is a secret space program controlled by the military. I don’t believe for a minute we have just given up.
I believe recently declassified documents point to a US military space program that was running concurrently with Apollo. The objective was a secret manned space station loaded with all sorts of cameras and electronic listening equipment.
But the spy-satellite technology advanced so quickly that the Pentagon abandoned it after already picking crews and starting their training.
http://pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/astrospies.html
2001 a space odyssey showed how to solve lack of “gravity” with a centrifuge living area.
The NASA source indicated the rotating section required to generate sufficient gravity would need to be 30km across. An insurmountable engineering problem, at this stage. As accurate as 2001 tried to be, it was still a movie.
Not so fast…
To simulate EARTH’S gravity it might need to be that big (30km). But to simulate ANY gravity the centrifuge could be considerably smaller (or possibly spin faster, etc.). Point is, they’re not really thinking (which is part of what we pay them to do).
Apparent coriolis deflection becomes nausea-inducing and butter-finger rendering when dropping tools with smaller.
…Simpsons did it… or, wait:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_with_Rama
This level of conspirousy theory is far far difficult to pull off than the supposed impossible history.
How did they contain the secret? Kill all the studio employees? Kill the killers? What amount of hush money would it take?
Good idea, if you need some volcanic basalt, cheaper places to get it.
Next big fun mission? Balloon Gondola on Titan a cryogenic proto planet.
It was a big mistake planting Old Glory on the Moon. Huge psych burden to cope with when Nth Korea lands an astronaut in 2030.
Best Korea had better start breeding like crazy because that’s one long human chain/pyramid to build in the 17 years left.* 🙂
*) We’ll put aside minor considerations (like the lack of oxygen, gravity, food, water or the ~238,850 miles of vacuum between earth and luna,) and look to the glorious leader for inspiration.
We’re 200 years out from having the technology required to colonize the moon. For now, the International Space Station must suffice.
Sad but true. Case in point, moon dust is highly toxic not just in its chemical composition, but its microsize and would present a major challenge to filter out.
Silicosis: Asbestos on steroids, finely ground into very small and sharp particles that white blood cells rupture when trying to clean out. Nasty stuff.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/22apr_dontinhale/
party pooper
Until humans become intelligent we should not be venturing out to other planets and contaminating them.
Perhaps in a few million years we will have the capacity to manage our own planet before we take on other projects.
I would agree that humans are not intelligent yet.
We are getting there. Slowly …
Too much political talking points, media shovelling pop culture trash.
Too little science and too little emphasis on “prove your dogma gets results with a peer-reviewed results” vs
“some knucklehead lib/conserve stooges that believe anything agree with you because they heard it on TV”.
Don’t let the drones/sheeps/dittoheads/lazybrains succeed in dumbing down the conversation, insist on raising the bar.
Seriously, NASA is a governmental agency dedicated to doing new things.
Going to the moon has been done before and they want to let the private sector take over.
If we go back to the moon, we had better not be relying on the government for anything more than tax breaks.
NASA is mostly a waste of money. Going to the moon can be done by private companies for cheaper, even selling seats. Why Bob Cringely is pretty close to sending a rocket to the moon and back, though he’s gotten secretive about it once he realized he couldn’t win the Lunar XPrize.
When Kraft found out the moon was not made of cheese they pulled their funding and the moon landings eventually stopped. It was a sad day but Kraft was able to recoup with innovations in Stove Top Stuffing.
I agree except that we need a theme park on the moon before leaving it completely. We’ve learned EVERYTHING already so now it’s time for a nice theme park.
watch out for the farmbot’s daughters
You can do science or you can run a welfare state. The choice has been made but even so the money is running out fast.
A trillion dollars added to the deficit every year.
A $16 trillion dollar national debt.
With no signs of any financial restraint.
We don’t have the money to play these feel-good science games.
We don’t have sufficient life-sustaining technology to not play.
We’re doing a fire dance right now. If we quit moving forward we’re toast. (Or roast, or cracklin’s, depending on our current fat content.)
Remember the cheese commercial?
“30+ years we went to the moon. We discovered it WASN’T made of cheese!
…We haven’t been back since.”
😉
Space travel requires a disproportionate amount of energy and time to be what Hollywood imagines and presents to us. There are diminished returns, and then things simply not worth doing from the get go.
Earth satelites is about as far as we can legitimately go before ego and pride and a cheer leader for general science competency are thrown into the mix.
When we see the models of the Solar System or the Universe with the objects/planets/stars visible only a few inches from one another, that is what our analog brain understands. But the reality is, space is so immense that solid objects in any true proportionate view are virtually invisible.
42.
If you want to send someone to the moon, just dig up Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows.
But, as far as it goes, there doesn’t seem to be much on the moon to go there for. It’s not like it has changed much. Still a lifeless, rocky, dusty, bone dry, atmosphereless place. You might as well revisit Bakersfield.
I’ve been to Bakersfield. The Moon has to be many times more interesting. No Buck Owens just to start with.
The trip to the moon could well be regarded the pinnacle of the American empire. What can we point to, since, with a sense of national pride?
Well there was George W. Bush. 😉