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Project Orion to Bring U.S. Back to the Moon
ganjadude writes "Thirty-seven years ago yesterday, Project Apollo put the first humans on the surface of the Moon. The next time the U.S. launches its astronauts to Earth's natural satellite, they will do so as part of Project Orion." From the article: "Under Project Orion, NASA would launch crews of four astronauts aboard Orion capsules, first to Earth orbit and the International Space Station and then later to the Moon. Two teams, one led by Lockheed Martin and the other a joint effort by Northrop Grumman and The Boeing Co., are currently competing to build the CEV. NASA is expected to select the winner in September."
Watch the HBO series "From the Earth to the Moon". That will explain why it's so important. :-)
Now is a very good time to start despite all of our current conflicts. Bush will be out of office soon enough, so we might as well start to climb out of the dark ages now.
Leonid S. Knyshov
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Moon exploration is nothing more than madness. The people involved are doing it to pad their pockets with huge no-low bid contracts.
First of all, there is nothing on the moon. No life, no water, no diamonds, no exotic metals, no oil, no guns, no women, no Jesus, nothing. Nothing worth the hundreds of billions of dollars that will be spent going back there.
Second, there are serious issues and problems here on earth that demand the resources that are to be wasted on this moon and space exploration nonsense. Things like global climate change and dwindling easy oil availablity and overpopulation. The people who are seriously planning to spend billions of other people's money on space exploration madness have been bribed into believing that the problems listed above simply don't exist, or are 'liberal propaganda'. They are deluded fools living in a purchased fantasy world. If you're young and intellegent, then you shouldn't be paying attention to them. Fools die when the fantasy collapses; smart people adapt to reality as it actually is. Be a smart person for a change.
Now finally to all the Slashdot community people who will tell me about how great it is that we are finally going back into real space exploration and about the minute details of obscure technologies that will be enhanced by the expenditure of billions of dollars (borrowed from foreigners and simply just thrown onto the already huge national debt) pissed away on space exploration, I say this:
Take a leave of absence from your job or school, your MUD, and your PC. Get a passport and a ticket to someplace in the developing world. Go someplace that it's cheap to live and where a large number of people speak a language that you understand. * I suggest India for Americans * and travel around. Stay in cheap local hotels and hostels, take the local transportation, talk to the locals in the coffee shops, talk to the other travelers. Do it until you actually begin to feel comfortable (or at least not stressed to extremes of paranoia and xenophobia).
Then return home to live that you used to live and see how weird everything is in the USA. And then get back on Slashdot and tell me with a straight face again about how much we really need space travel and moon exploration. The subject will have come up again by then.
The various world space programs are nothing more than giant welfare programs for pseudo-engineers and techno-nerds who are too stupid, narcissistic, greedy, and selfish to be able to apply their skills, training, and experience (and vision) to real-world problems that affect real-world people.
In the words of William Shatner: "Get a life"!
So the US is moving from a 7 person reusable space plane to a 30 year-old-idea 4 person capsule. A giant step for mankind.