43 thoughts on “I Want To Do Apollo Again”

  1. Actually, this is a perfect metaphor for Constellation: your rocket + spaceship is currently being rendered. It will be operational Really Soon Now.

  2. Darn it, Rand! Twittington already thinks he is a superhero. Did you have to reinforce his fantasy by giving him a costume? 🙂

  3. I’m sure you’re all on the edges of your seats now.

    I already fell off mine. Make sure you are on a solid seat 😀

  9. Edward, if I thought I was a super hero, I would wear a better costume than that.

    The take away here of course is that Rand does not hate Apollo.

  10. By the way, this is a rather inadvertent metaphor for the Internet Rocketeer Club. Creating a video that apparently does not run but displays the annoying robot that says that its loading and will be ready by and by. Sort of like all the good things Obamaspace is supposed to bring.

  11. Rand, Mark doesn’t think his costume is cool enough — could you fix it for him, please?

    I can understand why the Green Broccoli Man logo upsets him. George Bush didn’t like broccoli, and Mark would never wear, eat, or think anything that Bush didn’t approve of. No doubt he will snarl and leap the full length of his chain. 🙂

  12. Edward – Something dark and menacing, sort of like the Dark Knight likes to wear.

    Also, I understand the Bushes like barbeque and tex mex. So do I, but this is just a coincidence.

    Finally, when I leap the length of my chain, I break the chain and give a rebel yell (yee-aay-eee!)

  17. Rand, indeed. You are so often eloquent about how wonderful Apollo is and how great a model it is to build upon for future efforts.

  21. Something dark and menacing, sort of like the Dark Knight likes to wear.

    Yeah. I’m sure you’d out-Adamwest Adam West. 🙂

    I understand the Bushes like barbeque and tex mex. So do I, but this is just a coincidence.

    Sure. Like the way you supported privatization and commercial space — until you found out Bush didn’t. Or supported military spaceplane — until you found out Bush didn’t. Pure coincidence.

    If Bush came out against barbecue, you’d probably become a vegetarian and start telling us that beef was “ObamaFood.” 🙂

  22. Rand, clicking on the link works more reliably than the embedded version. Maybe check you need to refresh the embed code or something?

  23. Creating a video that apparently does not run but displays the annoying robot that says that its loading and will be ready by and by. Sort of like all the good things Obamaspace is supposed to bring.

    Mark, the private sector, which you constantly denigrate as “Obamaspace,” has been launching satellites for almost 30 years without your knowledge. Shockingly, it was a Republican, Ronald Wilson Reagan, who privatized the Atlas and Delta launch vehicles.

    “Reagan/Obamaspace” has the ability to launch payloads beyond low Earth orbit, not “by and by.” It’s been doing that since the 1980’s. NASA has no launch system capable of reaching beyond LEO, and (despite your belief in the superiority of central planning and government ownership of the means of production), it has failed in numerous attempts to develop a new launch system — again, dating back to the 1980’s.

    It’s shocking that someone who boasts of having a “BA in history” does not know these facts. Of course, nothing that I say here will affect your ignorance because I am talking to the Bat Stump.

  24. Rand, it looks like you regressed.

    I disabled my browser cache, and now the linked version doesn’t work for me, either.

    It looks like it was working sometime earlier today but is gone now.

  25. I’m trying to upload to YouTube, but I didn’t have an account, and setting one up has turned into a Google account nightmare, in which nothing works the way it says it’s supposed to.

  27. I’m not sure I get it. The dialogue is rather lame, even by the standards of Internet comments sections. The animation was sub par. And the whole comic book costumes, the cage suspended over the lava pit (but not being lowered in), one suspects is supposed to symbolize something, but God knows what.

  28. Edward, Obamaspace has as much to do with the private sector as Obamacare has with the privite practice of medicine. It is, at best, state sponsered capitalism.

  30. Did anyone in science fiction or fantasy ever — EVER — anticipate that a medium such as this would become available to the general gee.. uh, public? Remarkable…

  31. Mr. Whittington:

    It’s obvious that your grasp of the online world is weak. Please ixquick “xtranormal”. By doing so, you may spare yourself much future ridicule.

    And yes, I know you want to do Apollo again.

  33. Edward, Obamaspace has as much to do with the private sector as Obamacare has with the privite practice of medicine.

    “privite practice of medicine”???

    Holy hypocrisy, Bat Stump! You mean “privite practice” like the government prescription-drug program pushed through by big-spending RINOs like George Bush and Tom Delay — personal heroes of yours? Part of the biggest expansion of Federal spending since the Kennedy Administration, which you never once criticized? How exactly is that “privite”?

    No, Mark, it is nothing like that. Let’s take this one step at a time.

    First, as I noted, the privatization of expendable launch vehicles began under Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s. Barack Obama was a college student at the time. Even you can’t be stump-headed enough to believe that Reagan was somehow influenced by Obama. So, calling privatization “Obamaspace” is dishonest in the extreme.

    Second, you supported privatization and commercial spaceflight up until 1984. Obama hadn’t even been elected to the Senate at that time. He certainly hadn’t announced any space policy. So, what happened that year to turn you rabidly against commercial space? It was a new policy announced, not by Barack Obama, but by George W. Bush.

    You began attacking commercial space a full five years before Barack Obama became President and six years before he announced his policy of support for further privatization — part of a trend set in place by Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s and endorsed by prominent conservatives such as Newt Gingrich, Bob Walker, and Dana Rohrabacher who (not matter what aspersions you choose to make) are no big fans of Barack Obama. You attacked Newt Gingrich (for example) when he suggested offering prizes for manned space exploration — before Obama ever made it to the White House. So, your current claim that privatization equals “Obamaspace” is pure fantasy.

    Transferring government responsibilities and government programs to the private sector, wherever possible, is a long-standing principle of the Republicans and conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. It is not the same as transferring private responsibilities (like health care) to the Federal government. It is the opposite. Even you must be capable of understanding that, so I have to assume you are only pretending to be dense as a stump.

    But of course, as I already noted, you were not opposed to transferring private responsibilities like health-care to the Federal government in the first place. You liked the idea, when the Stupid Party was doing it.

    Just as you used to like the idea of commercial space, before you realized George Bush didn’t. I recall you even said good things about SpaceShip One and suborbital vehicles, once upon a time, and on one occasion actually suggested that it might be a good thing for the Federal government to create an airmail-type program to encourage their development — similar to the CRUSR program which you RINOs are now trying to kill. (Yes, I’m sure you will deny ever having said that.)

    Finally, even if the idea of privatization actually originated from the mind of Barack Obama, as you want people to believe, that would be sufficient reason to oppose it. To argue that idea is bad simply because you don’t like the man who proposes is called an “ad hominem” argument — a widely recognized logical fallacy. Surely someone who boasts of having a “BA in history” must have learned enough logic to know that.

  34. Look: we’ve given up look OUT to the moon, and are now looking IN to entitlement programs.
    If we can’t engineer a balanced budget, WTF another man on the moon?
    We’ll be as innovative in the future as we are non-socialist.

  35. OK, I watched it, and I think you’re doing a disservice to the arguments of the Apollo-on-steroids guys. “I don’t care” is not an statement that gets used in these online space arguments. Obviously those of us involved in these arguments all DO care, otherwise we’d be spending our time elsewhere. The case against NASA developing heavy lift is strong, but knocking down straw men convinces nobody.

  36. I agree with Ed.

    Next, I’d like to point out that the video starts out incorrectly by saying the blueprints for the Saturn V were destroyed. That’s an urban myth.

    NASA had developed the Apollo Extension Systems (AES) as a plan for the beginnings of a lunar base. Development actually started in May, 1966. The initial plan was for a first mission in March, 1970. But budget cutbacks and then the cancellation of further Saturn V production led to the post-Apollo project being cancelled in June, 1968.

    The planned evolution was to take the basic Apollo hardware forward to the Apollo Extension Systems. Next would have been the Apollo Logistics Support System and then to the Lunar Exploration System for Apollo. The end result would have been continuously expanding permanent stations on the moon.

    There was a plan and Apollo was part of that plan. But Johnson had a war to fight and Nixon wasn’t interested. I don’t think Obama is interested either.

    So here we are, at the end of 2010 … about 40 after years later of a “flexible plan” to nowhere … and not even as close as were were then.

  37. Of course they would avoid saying “I don’t care” but what was broccoli guy responding to? Costs.

    Since it’s fairly simple to demonstrate that ‘Apollo-on-steroids’ cost more, “I don’t care” represents a simplification or short-hand of their argument and as such, is not a strawman.

    “I don’t care” is not to be taken literally. That fact that you and other do care has little to do with the point being made in the animation. You may care about a great many things, but the greater cost of ‘A-on-S’ is not apparently one of them.

    The point is emphasized at the end after showing that components of what ‘A-on-S’ can be launched on existing systems for much lower cost and risk… “I like Apollo” = “I don’t care”

  39. I’d like to point out that the video starts out incorrectly by saying the blueprints for the Saturn V were destroyed. That’s an urban myth.

    What a shock, that someone who wants to repeat Apollo believes in other urban myths…

  41. I thought the ‘I don’t care’ was pretty accurate. It isn’t typically said, but it’s the general undertone. HLV/SDLV proponents (nearly the same group of people) simply ignore arguments they cannot counter and change the subject.

  43. Cool movie bro, however the part at the end where Broccoliman Apollohugger doesn’t get dropped into the lava was a bit anti-climactic.

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