My thoughts on the passing of John Glenn, over at National Review.
[Update a while later]
Buzz Aldrin remembers his former colleague.
[Update a while later]
Dear President Trump, here’s how to make space great:
This list of goals sounds audacious, perhaps outrageous, but it is entirely within the capability and character of the people who built the Transcontinental Railroad, the Hoover Dam, and conquered a continent. Americans are leaders in every one of these fields. It is only necessary for the new President to unleash America’s potential—once unleashed, American innovators will move these dreams toward reality faster than anyone can imagine.
Asteroid mining, moon mining, propellant depots, solar-power satellites, asteroid deflection? Crazy talk, when instead we could be building a giant rocket.
I had dinner with Coyote in Seattle last June.
[Update early afternoon]
Bill Gates’s and America’s false memory of Apollo:
So whether you agree with Bill Gates and his assessment of Trump or not, it’s important to remember that funding for the Apollo program was opposed by the majority of Americans. Why then does America have this bizarre memory of the program? You can blame the baby boomers like Gates.
The baby boomers were kids during the Apollo space program. And when you’re a kid you don’t have much to worry about in the way of paying the bills or public policy. You certainly don’t have fully formed political ideas about, say, ways that government funds can be better used than blasting people into space.
But that was precisely what happened. Baby boomers, as children of the 1960s, just remember the speeches on TV and watching the moon landing. They don’t remember that the majority of Americans (American adults, as those are the people who get polled) thought that the Apollo space program was a waste of money.
Roger Launius, chief historian at NASA, put it best in a 2005 paper: “While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth.”
This is why, as I wrote a few months ago:
Because they view Apollo as the model for how large space programs should operate, and because they believe that Apollo represented a moment of national unity, they seem to think that we ought to recreate it.
In a sense, however, a critical reason that we cannot do what they want is because we never really did it the first time.
Stop trying to make Apollo happen again.
This bears emphasis: “NASA has much more insight into the new commercial systems than it’s ever gotten from the Russians on whom it has relied for half a decade.”
The comments section here really needs a “like” button.
If I may pick a nit…
I think you could have emphasized two things more:
1. Contrast 8 years they could have been flying crew on Dragon vs. from Kennedy’s speech to boot prints on the moon.
2. The commercial alternative to SLS.
But a good article I hope Trump gets to hear.
It’s pointless to compare how fast we’re doing things to Apollo, because we poured so much money into it.
Of course there’s a money difference but that just emphasizes the point that we could have had eight years of flight experience which would also have meant incremental upgrading where instead we have no human flights.
O/T
Ken, I’ve been thinking about your Mars colonization idea, and it occurs to me that you need to set up a non-profit organization. That’s your bridge between the future value of the colony and the initial costs of getting the people and materiel there.
I’d like to, but don’t think I’ll live long enough (got some bad kidney news this week.)
The thing that kills me (pun intended) is that I absolutely know that quality of life for humans on mars would be fantastic given just two things. A good start (not giving a list for now) and an ownership mentality.
Human’s shape their environment. On earth they do it without thinking about it. On mars, except for gravity, people will live in constructed environments even better suited to life than on earth… all because we don’t have to change earth much, but on mars we will.
For example: On earth, we accept a range of temperature variations. On mars, we will think it natural for the temperature of our environment to be perfectly constant and find it weird that it’s not like that on earth.
People on earth think food comes from a grocery and that other things come from other stores. Nothing comes from stores which is just a storage point. Mars is a fresh start without all the layers of baggage we think we can’t live without on earth.
What use is a baby, indeed.
I would certainly support the effort, but do not have the time left to see it through.
Good article Rand, read it all.
The first comment over there is excellent.
There are comments? I don’t see any.
Oh, now I see them.
They require Facebook to comment. As Facebook (and other social media) moves to the left (because of owner implemented algorithms) so will comments. not a huge problem today, but could become one.
Some might consider not being able to get a media or teaching job unless you have a lefty viewpoint a problem. How to address that?
When I saw the headline in NR this morning, accompanied by the picture of John Glenn, my heart sank. Then I read the byline, and was relieved. Great piece, Rand.
Superb article, Rand. Let’s hope the right folks read and understand it.
There is no reason to go to Mars. I would debate Mr. Simberg any day of the week.
On what topic? Who said anything about Mars?
I find your article on “Making NASA great Again” a bit hard to read in one quick reading.
Let me then state I will debate anyone who believe we should go to Mars.
Mars isn’t my bag, but I’ll take you up on that. This comment section is not the place for that, however, since the topic of this post does not match the topic of the debate.
I have a blog, and if you have one too we can conduct our debate on our blogs.
Also, I’m not American. When you say you’re against the statement “we should go to Mars” do you mean Americans, people in general, or NASA astronauts in particular? Let’s clarify what exactly we are debating and go from there.
I’d like to see that debate. Let us know where to follow it.
No nation, no humans. But as an American, if another country were to attempt it such as China or Russia, let them waste their money and weaken themselves.
I don’t have a blog but I am often at
https://bwi.forums.rivals.com/forums/test-politics-board.10/