NASA's Bolden: No American-Led Return To the Moon 'In My Lifetime'

MarkWhittington writes "A clash over the future course of American space exploration flared up at a recent joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board. In one corner was Al Carnesale of UCLA, who headed the recent study issued by the National Research Council that found fault with the Obama administration's plan to send American astronauts to an asteroid. In the other corner was NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who has been charged with carrying out the policy condemned by the NRC report."

Comments

Half colonized double planet

[An dochasac]

Look at this little planet Earth, its moon is HUGE. Only Jupiter and Saturn have bigger moons. Luna is nearly as big as Mercury, half as big as Mars but its home planet hasn't colonized it. Obviously there's no intelligent life there. Let's claim them both for the queen of the galactic empire.

Obama's plan is beyond daft. Asteroids are unstable, there is no place to hide from cosmic radiation or Bremstralung X-rays from solar wind. A mission failure in the lunar capture plan could lead to a global disaster. Could Columbus and Magellan have discovered the New World before they had ever sailed the Mediterranean? Could the Polynesians have found Hawaii and New Zealand if they weren't already experienced navigators amongst the nearby islands of Polynesia? What if the first of England had decided to capture Sumatra and bring the entire island home for the British crown before the British Navy had ever ventured as far as Ireland, would you have considered that to be a good plan? Its better than Obama's plan.