Whither Mars?

In a comment on my post about the “Face on Mars,” Foxnews reader “DocZen” asks:

When are we actually *going* to Mars?

Is the current lull in space exploration just that, or did we just look at Apollo as a big waste of time/money?

The way I see it, technology has been riding the advances we made during those years, and has really progressed little in my eyes…

We should look at going to Mars not as a proposition in and of itself, but as a way to experiment with new technologies, and get them into our living rooms (and pockets!)

What is it with current NASA administration, anyway? They’re so afraid to make space travel ‘cool’ that it almost hurts. Open up space travel to tourists. Bring back the days when we looked up to our astronauts, as now they are nameless, faceless scientists.

The WWII generation went to the moon, no offense, but the baby boomers spent too much time smoking pot and protesting…what is *MY* generation going to do with its time on earth?

In other words: “where the hell is my flying car?” :]

I’m printing the comment, because I think his questions and feelings are shared by many people.

Right out of the box, I’ll say that I don’t pretend to have an answer to the question of when we will send people to Mars. Predictions are always hazardous, particularly about the future. Of course, almost no one would have predicted in July, 1959 that men would be walking on the moon a decade later. I also have to confess to not seeing this as an urgent thing, at least until we get our other space affairs in order.

Space enthusiasts tend to see the Apollo program as the Golden Age, the paradigm of how a space program Should Be, and how it Could Be if only we got another President with the vision of JFK.

This is a myth. Recently-discovered documents indicate that Kennedy wasn’t particularly interested in space–as I described a couple of weeks ago, he only pursued Apollo as a response to the embarrassment of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Gagarin flight.

Now, he tells Webb that beating the Russians to the moon “is the top priority of the agency and … except for defense, the top priority of the United States government. …. Otherwise, we shouldn’t be spending this kind of money, because I’m not that interested in space.”

If by some political miracle (and that’s truly what it would take) we were to initiate a Mars program today, I believe that it would put us even further off track than Apollo did. We weren’t really ready to go to the Moon in 1961, and it would be premature to set off to Mars in 2002.

I don’t mean this in the sense of technical feasibility–clearly we were capable of sending men to the Moon in the sixties, and just as clearly we could send men (and women) to Mars today (or at least initiate an ultimately-successful program to do so) if we chose to.

What I mean is that by jumping to a grand goal before the technology has matured, we would bypass some critical steps in making it practical and affordable. We first stepped on the Moon in 1969. We last did so only three years later, almost thirty years ago. We haven’t been back because in our hurry, we didn’t lay the groundwork for a politically or economically-sustainable program.

In fact, NASA Administrator James Webb was very concerned about this at the time, but couldn’t get Kennedy to accept it as important.

On the tape, Webb tells Kennedy that some of the nation’s top space scientists doubt whether it is possible to send humans on a lunar voyage. “There are real unknowns about whether man can live under the weightless environment,” he says. Committing to a manned lunar landing, Webb tells the president, could leave the country vulnerable to failure. Instead, Webb insists, landing on the moon should be only part of a broad effort by NASA to understand the space environment and its effects on human beings.

Webb’s tone in confronting the nation’s chief executive is fearless. Historian John Logsdon of George Washington University says Webb “must have felt very strongly about this,” adding that there had been a running feud at NASA Headquarters about how much importance Apollo should have.

But Kennedy stands firm, telling Webb that the moon landing is NASA’s top priority. ” This is, whether we like it or not, a race?. Everything we do [in space] ought to be tied into getting to the moon ahead of the Russians.”

I think that, considering these new facts, and our stasis for the past three decades, relative to what was envisioned and possible, it’s time to lay to rest John F. Kennedy as the template for the ideal president to lead us into space.

And in fact, it’s a mistake to expect any President to both have that kind of vision, and the political support to implement it. It might happen, but it’s extremely unlikely (since it never really even happened the first time).

But if I can’t say when we’ll go to Mars, I can describe some of the conditions that will have to be in place before such a thing is likely to occur. And that’s what I’ll do in a post in the near future.

Our Friends In Riyadh, Part Deux

I’m still trying to confirm this from other sources, but Stratfor is reporting that Saudi Prince Abdullah has cancelled his meeting with Bush in Texas. Reason? To protest our Israeli/Palestine policy.

Does he really think that this will cause us to rethink our policy? Does he have absolutely no idea on what thin ice he’s treading? Maybe not, given that walking on ice is an alien concept to someone from that part of the world.

David Gergen Is Still An Idiot

I have a problem when it comes to a debate between Gergen and Bill Kristol. Gergen seems to have no political principles at all, and no discernable intelligence, but I’m still upset with Kristol for his sycophantic support of John McCain (and I’m even more perplexed by his recent bellicose stance, which seems to be so at odds with that, though it could be because he’s Jewish).

Anyway, they’re on Greta’s show, debating the appropriate tactics for the Mideast.

Gergen is taking the typical media idiotarian viewpoint that we have to resolve the situation in Israel/Palestine before we can take on Saddam. Worse, he ridicules the notion that installing a democratic regime in Iraq will improve things–he thinks that it will raise a new generation of terrorists. He said “this notion that winning will make us popular is ridiculous…” (quote from memory, but it’s essentially correct). As I said, idiot.

David, remember the weeks before we started the campaign in Afghanistan? Remember all the marches in the streets of Peshawar, with the crowd waving posters of bin Laden and Bert? Now, do you remember what happened to all of those crowds when the Taliban collapsed like tissue paper, and the Afghan people started playing music, and flying kites, and stopped pulling their women’s fingernails because they had some color on them?

Kristol has it right, as I’ve said in the past. Israel is just another front in our war with Wahhabism and fascistic Arab nationalism. To allow ourselves to be distracted by what’s going on there right now, waiting for a “peace process” that will never occur while the Arab world is funding Arafat, is pointless and delusionary. The Israelis are our allies, and they can handle that front just fine, as long as we let them.

As idiotarians have said, we must seek out “root causes.” Not poverty. Not Israeli “aggression.” Not McDonalds and Britney Spears. The root cause is an evangelistic and fanatical hatred of our religion, our culture, and our freedom. Those that promulgate it must be defeated, and to do so will not “create another generation of terrorists.” It will create the first generation of people in that part of the world who will appreciate the opportunity to live in the twenty-first, rather than the twelfth century.

Justice No Longer Denied

A federal judge has ruled that Linda Tripp can go forward with her lawsuit against the Pentagon for violation of the Privacy Act. The Bush Administration (which seems curiously indifferent to the predations on the law and Constitution by its predecessor) had sought to have the case dismissed.

Kenneth Bacon, the Pentagon official who leaked Tripp’s personnel record to a reporter friendly to the Administration (probably at the behest of the Clinton White House), suffered virtually no consequences for his law breaking.

They Weren’t Dynamite–They Were Just Leberwurst

Apparently, the Berlin father who dressed his daughter up as an Islamakazi to help Israel celebrate its founding is going to have to answer to German authorities.

I don’t think that Germany has a first amendment–I’m not sure what, if any, protections they have for freedom of expression. If he’s charged, it will apparently be for “condoning acts of violence.” That seems kind of mild and generic to me under the circumstances–it seems to ignore the fact that he’s teaching this child the virtues of killing herself and others.

If he were in this country, I’d sic Child Protective Services on him for child endangerment. If he thinks that German police are rough, wait until he runs into some American social workers…

They Weren’t Dynamite–They Were Just Leberwurst

Apparently, the Berlin father who dressed his daughter up as an Islamakazi to help Israel celebrate its founding is going to have to answer to German authorities.

I don’t think that Germany has a first amendment–I’m not sure what, if any, protections they have for freedom of expression. If he’s charged, it will apparently be for “condoning acts of violence.” That seems kind of mild and generic to me under the circumstances–it seems to ignore the fact that he’s teaching this child the virtues of killing herself and others.

If he were in this country, I’d sic Child Protective Services on him for child endangerment. If he thinks that German police are rough, wait until he runs into some American social workers…

They Weren’t Dynamite–They Were Just Leberwurst

Apparently, the Berlin father who dressed his daughter up as an Islamakazi to help Israel celebrate its founding is going to have to answer to German authorities.

I don’t think that Germany has a first amendment–I’m not sure what, if any, protections they have for freedom of expression. If he’s charged, it will apparently be for “condoning acts of violence.” That seems kind of mild and generic to me under the circumstances–it seems to ignore the fact that he’s teaching this child the virtues of killing herself and others.

If he were in this country, I’d sic Child Protective Services on him for child endangerment. If he thinks that German police are rough, wait until he runs into some American social workers…

A Waste Of Talent

John McWhorter and others have described how many of the things that hold blacks back in America are a function of their own cultural attitudes, in which studiousness or scholarship are derided, or even ostracized, as “acting white.”

This phenomenon carries through all the way to college, in which many talented people are channeled into “African-American Studies” (just as many innocent women are cheated of a true education in “Women’s Studies” departments), rather than into something that offers prospects for professions and productive endeavors beyond being African-American Studies professors.

I ran across this very good article in the Village Voice that deals with the specific issues of black scientists involved with NASA and astronomy, and how they’re often denigrated and discouraged by their own community. I highly recommend it.

But less obvious is that NASA’s move injects life into color-blind disciplines that black scientists say have been eclipsed within their own community by more overtly Afrocentric pursuits. Some top students lifted their faces from difficult physics textbooks only to receive what amounted to a slap from a black hand.

One example: Two African American undergraduate students on the Harvard University wrestling team were walking from the gym. The younger one, a kid from the Bronx named Neil, complained that his astrophysics courses weren’t leaving him time to sleep. The banter stopped as abruptly as their footfalls.

“Blacks in America do not have the luxury of your intellectual talents being spent on astrophysics,” declared the elder student, waving his hand in front of Neil’s chest. That indictment, recounted in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s autobiography, The Sky Is Not the Limit, rings fresh in him today, though he’s an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, where he also teaches classes for the CUNY program.

No, obviously what blacks in America need are more Cornel Wests, not people who discover, and impart real knowledge.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!