Space Stuff

This is a subject near and dear to me. I remember the Gemini launches and Apollo moon trips on TV when I was a kid. I loved it so much that my mother bought me a whole series of science books about it. I still have the books to this day, tucked away somewhere. The Apollo moon landings was the pinnacle of American science and technology at the time. Schools weren’t afraid to teach math, biology, chemistry and physics. The people NASA hired had Bachelors’ Degrees in said subjects and had an extrordinary amount of common sense mechanics. Of course this all in response to the Soviets launching Sputnik in 1957 and Uri Gagarin in 1961, which in fact the 46th anniversary of that was this week.

Americans today could care less about space programs. They care even less about taking the subjects that are required to get jobs in the aerospace industry period. What few engineers we are producing today work for the military industrial complex, re war; bombs, jets, missiles, etc. Our present administration spoke mighty words about space exploration and going to the moon and Mars, but where the rubber meets the road, the money just isn’t there. But there’s lots of money going to contractors making spy satellites, satellite killers, orbital lasers, space launched missiles and magnetic rail guns.*sigh*

Why is it that great advances in technology come from finding new ways to kill people and other living things?

NASA Chief: Civil Space of Strategic Importance

U.S. Military to Put Internet Router in Space

Space ‘Tsunamis’ Found Near Earth  This is a scary one here! Remember the movie “Core”?

5 responses

  1. I am sure that someone will come by and tell me that this is the way of the world since the time of the first walled city. One had to devise a way to get at the other guys’ stuff. I think it’s time to evolve from that idea, don’t you?

  2. It’s very possible that the Bush Regime has stolen the space money. Wouldn’t surprise me.

    You’re right about how America spends more money on how to kill people (51% goes to the military/Pentagon) rather than helping people. I think that sucks.

  3. Yo, old-timer…

    I don’t think that will happen anytime soon, Dad. If the evolutionists are correct in their theories, it is merely a matter of survival of the species, and all of our moral concerns are rather useless in that light. It is natural to strive for the supremacy. Our stance on the atrocities in Iraq may be valid from a collective ideological viewpoint, where the continuation of life is mutually beneficial if we learn to co-exist. Otherwise, this would simply be a matter of one tribe assuming it’s dominant place in the natural order of things.

    The Christian argues that we are not evolving, but de-evolving. That we need a benevolent intercessor to guide humanity through a temporal phase of existence toward the ultimate goal of perfection. Any way you look at it, it does not look good for the reality that we live in at the moment.

  4. A Christian would call me an evil secular humanist. But being a life-long “Trekker”(not Trekkie) I believe in Gene Roddenberry’s premise of Star Trek being that mankind can eventually rise above itself to become as angelic as the gods we claim to worship.

    Yeah, yeah, I may come across as a cynical ol’ cuss sometimes, but I still have a spark of that little boy idealism in me.

    So sue me, this is a house made of tinfoil after all!

  5. #2 Kay

    I think Bu$hcon didn’t intend to fund the moon and Mars missions, that was just more bullsh*t.

    But they do intend to fully fund the weapons systems. The Pentagon was dystopian scenarios planned for the next 20-30 years.

    Thank the universe I’ll be gone, but I weep for my children and grandchildren.

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