Commercial Space: Spirit of Apollo Or Spirit of Solyndra?

MarkWhittington writes "Andrew Chaikin, the author of A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, believes that the spirit of Apollo no longer resides at NASA, but rather in the nascent commercial space companies such as SpaceX. This assessment is disputed by many, who see in the Obama administration program of government subsidies for commercial space the spirit of Solyndra."

Comments

Why have Americans become nancies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you want to know why the American economy is swirling down the shitter? It's became Americans have become nancies. They have become sissies, if you will. They don't have the guts to take real risks. They don't have the guts to try something new.

Maybe this shouldn't be surprising. America often has been a backward "conservative" nation for much of its history. Aside from a few generations at the very beginning of America's modern history, the tolerance for risk has been decreasing rapidly. Without real risk you can't have real gain.

This story is a perfect example. This is clearly a very minor issue with a simple solution: send some willing astronauts in spacecraft into space, knowing that some missions may not succeed or even return! But America as a culture will overlook this, and will overlook the immense economic and environmental benefits that this technology would bring, because they are TOO FUCKING SCARED to take what's a very minor risk.