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Buzz Aldrin Pressures Obama For New Space Exploration Initiative

Posted by Soulskill on from the one-small-tweet-for-man dept.

MarkWhittington writes: While he has initiated the social media campaign, #Apollo45, to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin is also using the occasion to campaign for an expansion of American space exploration. According to a Tuesday story in the Washington Post, Aldrin has expressed the wish that President Obama make some sort of announcement along those lines this July 20. The idea has a certain aspect of deja vu. Aldrin believes that the American civil space program is adrift and that some new space exploration, he prefers to Mars, would be just the thing to set it back on course. There is only one problem, however. President Obama has already made the big space exploration announcement. Aldrin knows this because he was there. President Obama flew to the Kennedy Space Center on April 15, 2010, with Aldrin accompanying as a photo op prop, and made the announcement that America would no longer be headed back to the moon, as was the plan under his predecessor George W. Bush. Instead American astronauts would visit an Earth approaching asteroid and then, decades hence, would land on Mars.

4 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. It's the right thing to do. by B33rNinj4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm all for having a thriving, privatized space program. However, we still need the government to be involved and run their own end. We'll never get anywhere if we rely on just one side.

    1. Re:It's the right thing to do. by c4t3l · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's easy to turn this into a mudslinging match... But the truth is that NASA has the most experience in this field. Passive-aggressive comments like this only serve to derail the discussion. So let's keep it more college and less 8th grade eh?

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      Remember ALF?! He's back. In pog form!

  2. Re:Obama is gone in less than 2 years. by mtthwbrnd · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Obama might find a way to stay around. Or his handlers might. He is the most useful idiot they have had so far.

    Actually scratch that, you know what we need? A woman! Last time around I voted for the black guy, this time I'm voting for a woman. Gooooooo ME! I am like, so liberated! After that I will vote for a gay guy. And then a lesbian.

    Policies? Oh, who cares about policies!

  3. Re:Wrong initiative, enough of space. by c4t3l · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I gotta disagree with you bud. An entire generation of folks were inspired by the Apollo program to dream and become todays scientists/engineers etc. The world NEEDS lofty goals like this. I think that too many folks focus on "What NASA got us" and not on the value of the less tangible items (inspiration and willingness to push the envelope of human acheivement).

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