Scew Augustine, Head for the Moon
The great and wonderful Augustine Panel has released its final recommendations for NASA. With all due respect, I must disagree with the conclusion that we must skip the moon and head for Mars.
An obvious reason is that we’re not prepared for long-term space flight. Rocketing off to comets and asteroids won’t do anything for us either –except maybe provide a basis for a Bruce Willis sequel.
We need to establish our presence on the moon before China, Russia, India, and probably Botswana do it. We need the moon as a staging area for our mars missions, just as the ISS should have been a staging area for moon exploration. (Don’t worry, we’re going to throw the ISS into the Pacific ocean in 2015.)
We can ship the parts to the moon, build the rockets there for our trip to Mars, and avoid all the extra crap we’d otherwise need to escape the earth’s orbit.
Can we do it in a year? Five years? Ten years? We could get to the moon within that time easily and establish a base. (Let’s not call it “Alpha.”) It would be ten years from there to Mars provided we’re not peeing money away on unneeded social programs –or haven’t gone broke should current spending intentions be realized.
Why? At the very bottom of the list, it’s the same reason we came out of Africa, across Europe, and over to America. We need space. We tend to fight with each other when we’re crowded together. At the top of the list is the simple fact that exploring is what we do.
So, Mr. Augustine, stick your recommendation in a black hole. Let’s give the money earmarked for Acorn to NASA instead, let it get on with the development of the Ares 1, and let us boldly go where no man has gone before.
While I suspect a clever ploy is the reason, I can no longer resist asking about it.
“Scew”? My cognitively challenged self keeps reading it as “Screw”, but my OCD will have it’s day.
I concur with your observations outside of the desire to see a “Moonbase Alpha”.
You can interpret it as “Skew” or just give in to the fact that I’m trying for a family website.
I have to agree. The arguments for going to Mars seem to have one basic point over the moon, and that point is “there may be life”. Well, maybe. I wouldn’t bet the bank on it,
and that’s just what people seem to want to do.
I think the moon is a better option. If “we can make it there, we can make it…anywhere” to paraphrase a song.
Unfortunately, as things are going, Botswana will be asking us for our passports when we actually get there.