NASA sucks, plain and simple. As a matter of fact, NASA sucks so much that even former NASA administrator Michael Griffin said so back in 2005. True; he worded it differently, that NASA had lost it's way since the 70's and that the space shuttle, the International Space Station and nearly the whole of the U.S. manned space program for the past three decades were mistakes, but that's semantics.
July 20th 2009 is going to mark the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing. Following this historic event, there was lots and lots of talk about colonizing the moon, going to Mars, etc, plus the general population actually got introduced to space-age technology, like Velcro. Space exploration was cool, and totally found it's way into pop culture as well. It was like the pioneer days all over again; to boldly go where no one has gone before, and all that.
That was then. Since then, they took to mucking about with low-orbital flights in the space shuttle, which from the perspective of pioneering is a glorified tour bus. Sure it can hold more people than the Apollos, but it's a much harder sell. Once you've promised colonization of the moon, travelling to Mars and all that, it's hard to get excited about a bunch of people in orbit. It's even harder to get excited about the International Space Station; essentially it's like the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine with a flat tire, but in space. The damn thing just sits there, like a giant trash can, and personally I couldn't care less about Russians and American astronauts shaking hands in space - forget that shit.
Imagine if C Square had rolled back into the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1496 with bold new exploration plans - after "sailing 'cross the ocean blue in 1492" like one is taught in teh States at an early age, C Square now wanted to build a slightly bigger ship - Corona - and boldly head out from the Canary Islands to Madeira. Dude would have gotten his ass kicked and rightly so.
What if Roald Amundsen had sought funding for a new and bold expedition; after being the first man on the South Pole he now wanted to launch an expedition just north of Trondheim? Closer in proximity, true, but with more people....
That's more or less what NASA has been doing for decades now, and they're wondering why they are a PR fiasco. Sir Richard Branson and his Virgin Atlantic Globalflyer is going to offer more in the way of space exploration as charter tourism for really rich people than NASA is presently doing with manned space crafts. How pathetic is that
The fiascos with the space telescope etc doesn't make things better. Your reputation as a scientist is truly shot when you can't figure out how to convert between units and thus screw up big time on prime time television. The space telescope gives awesome pictures, but when you're relying on that to boost your public image, you should expect that people get bored. After a while, the pics - who also start to look similar - don't do the trick, and sooner or later folks are gonna catch on to the fact that when you move the objective closer to the event, you get better pictures. Something with proximity again....
I want my personal jetpack and my flying car, dammit.
July 20th 2009 is going to mark the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing. Following this historic event, there was lots and lots of talk about colonizing the moon, going to Mars, etc, plus the general population actually got introduced to space-age technology, like Velcro. Space exploration was cool, and totally found it's way into pop culture as well. It was like the pioneer days all over again; to boldly go where no one has gone before, and all that.
That was then. Since then, they took to mucking about with low-orbital flights in the space shuttle, which from the perspective of pioneering is a glorified tour bus. Sure it can hold more people than the Apollos, but it's a much harder sell. Once you've promised colonization of the moon, travelling to Mars and all that, it's hard to get excited about a bunch of people in orbit. It's even harder to get excited about the International Space Station; essentially it's like the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine with a flat tire, but in space. The damn thing just sits there, like a giant trash can, and personally I couldn't care less about Russians and American astronauts shaking hands in space - forget that shit.
Imagine if C Square had rolled back into the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1496 with bold new exploration plans - after "sailing 'cross the ocean blue in 1492" like one is taught in teh States at an early age, C Square now wanted to build a slightly bigger ship - Corona - and boldly head out from the Canary Islands to Madeira. Dude would have gotten his ass kicked and rightly so.
What if Roald Amundsen had sought funding for a new and bold expedition; after being the first man on the South Pole he now wanted to launch an expedition just north of Trondheim? Closer in proximity, true, but with more people....
That's more or less what NASA has been doing for decades now, and they're wondering why they are a PR fiasco. Sir Richard Branson and his Virgin Atlantic Globalflyer is going to offer more in the way of space exploration as charter tourism for really rich people than NASA is presently doing with manned space crafts. How pathetic is that
The fiascos with the space telescope etc doesn't make things better. Your reputation as a scientist is truly shot when you can't figure out how to convert between units and thus screw up big time on prime time television. The space telescope gives awesome pictures, but when you're relying on that to boost your public image, you should expect that people get bored. After a while, the pics - who also start to look similar - don't do the trick, and sooner or later folks are gonna catch on to the fact that when you move the objective closer to the event, you get better pictures. Something with proximity again....
I want my personal jetpack and my flying car, dammit.
Posts
4 comments:
...fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like, on jupiter and Mars...
:-D
...why no love for Jupiter?
Or was your lack of capitalization not intentional, unlike what's the case when I write something about france or mexico?
No, wilhelm, that was intentional. No love.
;-)
It's a cold cold world
Post a Comment