All of the science fiction authors of the past looked forward and saw a rosy future– man expanding to the Moon, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, the Outer Planets… then outward still. (“Out ride the sons of Terra / Far drives the thundering jet, / Up leaps a race of Earthmen, / Out, far, and onward yet —”)
Instead, we’re perpetually “a decade” from the Moon. Returning to the Moon, not going there in the first place! Our second Space Station is behind schedule– and when we do finish it, it’ll be a mere five years from the scrapheap! (Next year, the last Shuttle lifts the last component, and retirement is looking like a 2016 timeframe.) By the Nine Divines, we were supposed to have spinning wheels in orbit that would make von Braun envious from beyond the grave!
Instead, we have a billion-dollar showcar that’s cross-dressing as a truck, kills a high percentage of its passengers, and can’t live up to any of its original performance specs– turnaround time, cost per pound to orbit, man-hours of maintenance per flight…
Instead, the last NASA Director who knew his rectum from a mine shaft lies in a hospital because he was flying in an aircraft as old as he was. Where’s “No Sparrow Shall Fall” when you need it?
Instead, our space agency has been told that their new focus is outreach to the Islamic world.
Help us private industry, you’re our only hope…
Linoge
16 Aug 10 at 5:29 PM
*sigh* And that is probably the saddest part of growing up in the 80s… I voraciously read Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and all of the other various books and magazines that had been written in the immediate decades before, about how we would go about colonizing first our own orbit, then the moon, and go on from there.
… And then I got front-row seats to the demolition, and eventual implosion, of the United States space program.
*sigh*
Burt Rutan does give me hope, but until he can demonstrate that it is economically self-supportive and profitable, we ain’t gettin’ nowhere.
Dixie
16 Aug 10 at 7:52 PM
I remember one plan that had a system called VISITOR (don’t remember what that was an acronym of…). Large space stations (von Braun’s wheels) on repeating orbits between the Belt and Earth. All you had to do was match orbits, and you were on a cruise liner for 6 months.
But nooo… that cost too much! (spits)