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Apollo Veteran: Skip Asteroid, Go To the Moon
astroengine writes "It's 40 years to the day that the final mission to the moon launched. Discovery News speaks with Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison 'Jack' Schmitt about where he thinks the Earth's only satellite came from and why he thinks a NASA manned asteroid mission is a mistake. 'I think an asteroid is a diversion,' said Schmitt. 'If the ultimate goal is to get to Mars, you have a satellite only three days away that has a great deal of science as well as resources. The science of the moon has just been scratched. We've hardly explored the moon.'"
The National Research Council came out with a report a few days ago which found that the inability for the U.S. to find a consensus on where to go is damaging its ability to get there. Bill Nye spoke about the issue, saying, "I believe, as a country, we want to move NASA from [being] an engineering organization to a science organization, and this is going to take years, decades. Now, through investment, we have companies emerging that are exploring space on their own and will ultimately lower the cost of access to low-Earth orbit, which will free up NASA to go to these new and exciting places."
Politically speaking, about the only way to do that would be to get the defense contractors on board (since they all but own Congress outright). Unless Congress puts Northrop Grumman in charge of building the craft, Blackwater (or whatever they're calling themselves this week) in charge of moon security, and KBR in charge of moon logistics, you can forget diverting any money from defense.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
and who is going to build these spaceships? Toyota?
The defense contractors were the ones who built apollo. Northrom Grumman built the moon lander outside of NYC