My 2 Cents on Space Flight

I guess I’m getting cynical in my old age.

I grew up on the cusp of the space program. I remember when Alan Shepherd took the first US ride in space and I remember when John Glenn did the first US orbital flight.

These were exciting times. After all, we had an arch enemy, The Soviet Union to defeat.

Cold wars were so fun with all the posturing and puffery. The Olympics were much more fun back then when you went up against communist nations. It meant something. You settled your national differences for the next 4 years in the boxing ring and the track.

Anyway, back to space. I used to get up and watch each space shot for hours on end as Walter Cronkite would explain in detail about the mission and the spacecraft. The race to the moon was real and I felt a part of it.

Something happened though along the way, after we got all the cool stuff from space travel like satellite TV, Velcro and Tang instant breakfast drink. The realization that there is nothing up there and it is expensive to see nothing, means more to me now than it did back then.

What positive thing has come out of the latest international space station except for some jobs in Florida, Alabama and Texas? Why go back to the moon?

My argument is mainly against manned space flight. Send probes and robots with HD cameras to do exploration.

I remember on my first trip to St Croix, the United States landed two golf cart sized robots on mars to carry out a 90 days mission. Those two robots are still going!

The Hubble space telescope has been a marvelous investment in science.

But please NASA, stop wasting money on sending man up there.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I think it would have been awesome to have grown up when you did for reasons other than space flight. The 80's kinda stunk!

TerryC said...

Ummm, what's with the dog? It's a cute dog, but what does it have to do with space flight?

Unless you wanted to blog about how the USSR sent that dog up there and just let her die in space. And then you forgot that part. I do that sometimes, you know, forget what I started blogging about and go off on a tangent.

Liv said...

Yeah. I'm kind of over space travel. Can you imagine what my face looked like when my cousin announced that he had made the high 6 figure deposit on a consumer space flight?? Like, um, no one I know (in the mirror) could use that kind of money.

none said...

But we have to beat the chinese to Mars ;)