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Down with NASA – a 50 year shuttle to nowhere!

Posted by Ralph at 11:02 Down with

Feb 232015

: Image via Wikipedia

Back when I was a kid in the 50’s, everybody thought for sure we would be in space by 2000. I mean really in space with at least a working space station and regular missions to the Moon if not a colony. Not the hokey, useless space station that we can’t get to anymore anyway.

When the Russians were first to launch a satellite (Sputnik will be forever etched in my brain), the US rushed to catch up. The Moon landing was a triumph and right on schedule but after that things went horrible wrong. The adventure was over. The bureaucrats took charge and we wasted the next 50 years going nowhere with the space shuttle – the biggest waste of government dollars since the Great Society.

The public didn’t know. The NASA mouthpieces had a good story – if you didn’t think about it. A reusable vehicle makes sense so long as it gets you where you need to go. Unfortunately people with lives to live don’t spend much time thinking about space. We didn’t know that the worthless space shuttle couldn’t reach the altitude necessary for space exploration or a station that could serve as a way station to the moon. The $174 billion cost of this program to nowhere may not seem so big compared to TARP but the dollar amount is only part of the cost. Since the program started in the 60’s the US space program has been heading in the wrong direction on a road to nowhere. Now that the space shuttle has been axed we are up the creek without a paddle. We can’t even go back to the Apollo program because we threw away all that technology. Thank you government bureaucrats!

Looking back, it is obvious that only fools would leave the future of the human race to a government program. We were naive in the 60’s. We still thought that we could do anything so long as we developed a government program for it. As we now know surveying the wreckage of the paradise that used to be California President Reagan was right when he said. ‘Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.’

Contrast the space shuttle debacle with the private space program which has so far accomplished far more than NASA in making space open to exploration. They have a reusable craft which doesn’t look anything like the clunky shuttle and they will be offering commercial flights into space soon. No astronauts. No space walks. Just real tourists seeing space up close and personal. You can book a flight right now. They also have vision. They are planning for a space station which will be a hotel as well as a transit point for trips to the Moon. We are finally going to get into space but not with the government driving

So lets kiss off the $450 billion or so that NASA has cost us to date off as a lesson and kill NASA. We don’t need to spend any more money letting them lead us further and further away from space. I see the future of space and it doesn’t have the government’s stamp on it. The future of space is in private hands.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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The Future Just Ain’t What it Used To Be!

Posted by Ralph at 10:29 Plain 'ol Cantankerous, rants

Mar 092014

Did we miss the exit?

It mystifies me!

Sometimes I don’t even understand what’s going on. Life is a great adventure and it is easy to get lost in the weeds and focused on minutia. One way for that to happen is when you let yourself get sucked into the news. The media only make money after they persuade you that what they are selling is something you need to know. And they work damn hard at it.

I’ve learned over time that stuff happens whether I know about it or not. I have about the same influence over events whether informed or ignorant. However I find that I am much happier when I am ignorant. So I turn off the news and ignore the newspapers. This allows me to pretend that the world isn’t falling apart right before my eyes. It keeps me closer to sane and reasonable than I would otherwise be. When the wheels fall off the bus, with any luck I will be otherwise occupied.

It’s not easy!

It takes superhuman effort to block all the news however. Here and there a story will leak through my protective shield and over time, it is impossible not to notice that the world is changing. And not for the better.

One of the things that really bugs me is the future. Back when I was a kid we worshiped the future and believed in progress, technology and science. The future was where life got even better, where there were new worlds to conquer and frontiers to explore. Cars changed every year. And those changes were substantial. Tail fins came and went. Windshields wrapped and unwrapped. Everybody knew when you had a year old car and snickered unlike these days where cars hardly change at all and nobody can tell that your car is five years old and they are all ugly.

Or take airplanes. The 707 was a breakthrough but 40 years later today’s planes don’t fly any faster, they just carry more people, have overhead bins and lousy service. The Concorde was a dead end and the airliners on the drawing board are just effete refinements of old technology not breakthroughs.

Who killed the future?

Not in your future

When I was a kid, the future was exciting. We would be traveling at supersonic speeds long before the new century. Where are those supersonic airliners? Nobody is even dreaming about them any more. And take space travel. When President Kennedy launched the Apollo Moon Project we all got excited because it meant that man would finally escape Earth and embrace a new frontier. Well America had enough oomph to get to the Moon but that was it. NASA frittered away our space heritage and technology for the timid and useless space shuttle which could never reach a useful altitude for space exploration and bored us to tears even when it crashed.

What impresses me today is that it isn’t part of our culture anymore to embrace the future. NASA has turned into the IRS with no vision or dreams about space and no magic. Our leaders don’t talk about the future like they did when I was a kid. And people aren’t upset that we don’t have a future. It is all they can do to keep their eyes on the ground for fear of making a misstep and falling. These days we can’t afford a future.

So what went wrong?

I don’t know for sure what went wrong. I don’t know why people stopped dreaming big and expecting the future to be bright. I do have my suspicions. For me, the optimism stopped when President Kennedy was shot. It was the end of the era of optimism and can do spirit and the beginning of second guessing America and the American way. It was the end of progress and the future and the beginning of self-doubt and introspection. Take it for what it is worth but my judgment is this.

The future died with President Kennedy

What! Me worry?

The future of America died with President Kennedy. All the problems, loss of focus and dithering in our country started with one man and his anti-American agenda and once the country made a worng turn, nobody has ever even tried to get it right again (well maybe one guy but it is going to take an army).

So who might I be talking about, you ask? Who was that destructive, subversive man and what was his anti-American agenda? I’ll tell you.

It was Lyndon Johnson and the catastrophic Great Society.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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A retro moment I could have done without

Posted by Bob@HayleStorm Interactive at 01:52 Softer side

Jun 282013

Image via Wikipedia

I’m going to throttle back my overbearing, know-it-all, in your face attitude just a bit this week, and ask Ralph to forgive me for horning in on one of his favorite categories to write about… Nostalgia.

Despite this post being due for publication on Monday, February 28, I sit here on the previous Thursday feeling the need to write Monday’s post now. I saw something happen today that got the muse going, and she will not be denied.

First, let’s back up a little bit. 50 years, to February 20, 1962 to be exact.

Just nine months after JFK had called for the United States to put a man on the Moon by 1970, a fellow no one outside of military flying had ever heard of, John Glenn, climbed into a Mercury capsule and into the role of American hero.

Two men, wearing that newfangled career moniker “astronaut” had preceded Glenn in our quest to conquer space, taking brief, sub-orbital flights.

This day, this flight, was to be dramatically different. John Glenn, riding in Friendship 7, was going to be the first American to orbit the earth, circling it three times in approximately 4 hours before splashing down. Not to minimize the United States earlier flights, but this was a major step forward for JFK’s vision of reaching the moon. Sub-orbital flight amazed, but actually orbiting the earth and returning safely was almost beyond belief.

America’s march to the moon progressed through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs, and ended on December 19, 1972 when Apollo 17, our last manned flight beyond earth orbit, splashed down. Astronaut Gene Cernan was the last man to walk on the moon. Little did we know it then that now, almost 40 years later, we would not yet have returned.

And now today, Thursday, February 24, 2011 we watched the sun setting on the United States manned space program. At 4:50 PM Eastern Standard Time space shuttle discovery, the first of the shuttle fleet, launched from Cape Canaveral for the last time.

Sure, there will be a couple more shuttle launches, but this, the final launch of the workhorse of the shuttle fleet, brings into stark relief the fact that the United States days of commanding the heavens are over, at least for the foreseeable future. After this and a couple more launches, culminating with a June 28 launch of space shuttle Atlantis, the United States will once again be earthbound for the first time since Alan Sheppard was launched in Freedom 7 on May 5, 1961 in a suborbital flight that lasted just 15 minutes.

When Atlantis lands at the end of its final flight, the United States will be hitchhikers to the international space station, a space station mostly built, and paid for, by the United States. Regarding manned space travel we will once again be at the mercy of the Russians.

When was the last time we were in that position? Before launch time on February 20, 1962. How’s that for progress?

Ralph got a bit agitated over the space program too.

Bob@HayleStorm Interactive

Bob comes to us with a skeptical attitude and a full cup of Cantankerousness. He also writes about homesteading and yurts over at JuicyMaters.com and rants about politics at Common-Sense-Conversation.com Most of the time, though, you'll find him at HayleStorm.net, cranking out great websites for clients OR writing tutorials teaching them to build their own sites.