OUR OPINION: One more small step, one more giant leap
August 27, 2012 at 4:30 pm in Grand Forks Herald
As Neil Armstrong testified, America is well on its way to giving up its historic lead in manned space flight. That trend should be reversed.
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“Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring–not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive… If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.”
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
“I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.”
Stephen Hawking, interview with Daily Telegraph, 2001
Obama killed our Space Shuttle program as we knew it and now we are left to sit idly by while the rest of the world takes its baby steps and leads us into the future.
We spend Billions on Welfare to ensure our population continues to grow at an insane rate all while having no where to put these people.
The Planet is trying to rid itself of this ever growing plague that is humanity.
I would suggest we spend a bit more time and effort on exploring space and a means to be able to lower the burden on this planet by transiting to another planet.
Cancelling the Space shuttle program and cutting NASA’s budget to the core isnt doing that.
Its ensuring we have all our eggs in this one fragile basket so that we are all doomed eventually as a species.
Kennedy got us to the moon in less than 10 years using less technology than that in a modern cell phone.
Our technology has doubled more than 100 times since then.
And here we sit.
So much for the American Spirit of exploration and leading the world as a technological superpower.
A great democrat started us off on the right path, a Community organizer killed it.
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The Space Shuttle Program had done it’s work. The new frontier is in exploring other places rather than the moon. The rover Curiosity that recently landed on Mars is sending back new information that can help us find hospitable landing sites and potential areas that humans can colonize. It was clear the moon had no water, nor was the Space Shuttle far enough out there to help with further exploration. In addition, now that going to the moon and Space Shuttle fairly routine, these runs can be taken over by the private sector. That is happening already as the latest efforts on the part of private space exploration companies start to pay off. We really can’t just continue what has become routine trips to the space station for the umpteenth time. The next challenge is waiting in the form of finding the next jumping off point. Mars might works but other planetary destinations are on the drawing boards. The government only has limited fund for this type of thing and we need to put our money where it will reap the most new information.
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A lot of good points.
It is time for the private sector to do the low earth orbit studies and the rovers are a wonderful addition for more information and data.
I just feel at some point in the past 30 years we should have set our sights a bit higher for manned exploration.
I feel we became to passive in our push and now we will find ourselves fighting with other nations for the lead that was once ours.
The sooner we manage to start a colony on the moon or mars either one, the better.
When that happens we will have achieved the true “One small step for man” as we will be in a position to push even further and actually experience the “One giant leap for mankind”
I just hope it happens in my lifetime, i would love to witness our move towards the stars.
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Thanks, Capt! We’re on the same page with this one.
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