"For a country that has invested so much for so long to achieve a leadership position in space exploration and exploitation, this condition is viewed by many as lamentably embarrassing and unacceptable," he said. "A lead, however earnestly and expensively won, once lost, is nearly impossible to regain."Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, told lawmakers Thursday that the end of the space shuttle era has left the American human spaceflight program in an "embarrassing" state.
Armstrong was part of a four-member panel of space experts who told lawmakers that NASA needs a stronger vision for the future and should focus on returning humans to the moon and to the International Space Station.
"A lead, however earnestly and expensively won, once lost, is nearly impossible to regain," said the US astronaut, now 81, who was commander of Apollo 11 and walked on the moon in 1969.
Earlier this year President Barack Obama canceled the Constellation program that would have returned humans to the Moon and called on NASA to instead focus on new, deep-space capabilities to tote people to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars by 2030.
Read the rest of the article over at Discovery.com.
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2 comments:
Unfortunately quite a few Americans would prefer we shut down NASA entirely. It's rather amazing just how blinkered their understanding of what NASA has given us is.
Just last week in one of my classes, my teacher began a debate on space travel. Well more of an hands up or down vote either for or against. Better than 70% of the hands went up in the "Against" category. He then promptly stated that they should all hand over their GPS, Cell Phones, I-pads, Laptops, and a whole host of other items that are either directly or indirectly the spawn of the space program.
The problem is that due to being on top for a long time, a lot of Americans have fully vested themselves in their Kool-aid drinking ways and believe we are simply on top because we are awesome, not because we clawed our way to the top through hard work and vast toil and expense.
Obama is simply playing to this base who thinks we should "Take care of problems here on earth first".. without realizing that the for the pitiful investment we put into NASA our returns are enormous once their data has been filtered through industry or college campuses and turned into a product or new way of performing a service.
You have it absolutely right, Lagomorph. NASA didn`t happen on its own. We got to the moon through dedication and hard work, which is the same thing that moved society west, that helped us persevere in the new world of North America.
Kids today (and some adults who should know better) have forgotten that. You`re right -- they sit back with their laptops and ipods and cell phones with their sense of entitlement and little else going on between their ears.
It`s not just blinkered thinking regarding NASA, a lot of people are blind to the way the world works and how we got to where we are now.
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