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Oct 18, 2003 Every time we shop at Walmart the Chinese warchest for a lunar base gets a boost; dont believe me? Try and buy a pair of shoes that’s not made in the Peoples Republic. We are the failed generation, history will look back and call this world wide lull in manned space activity as the equivalent of the dark ages in the design and production of manned space vehicles. We don't have an answer to the British French Concorde in aviation circles(expensive and too small to be practical)but it pointed to a future that no civil aerospace firm in America ever claimed. What a shame! Materials, computer modeling , rapid prototyping and finite element analysis and other advances since the 60's and yet none of the major players or their investors seem to have been able to translate that into a practical design. Mock-ups and test beds are everywhere.. funding is spent and projects shelved or moth balled for lack of a viable commercial design. NASA for all of the money the American taxpayer has given them has failed, they have failed to educate and build any sort of public interest in the future of manned spaceflight. Time after time they have proven themselves unresponsive to public requests for the re-imaging of certain features on Mars. The arrogance of the high cabal continues and as we watch the Chinese prepare to go to the moon, with a moon base planned.. My question for NASA is: What have you been doing for the last 3 decades? Have you designed a heavy lift rocket using all of the advances available? Mars has been waiting and we are waiting.. we want a manned mission to Mars... but maybe a long duration Lunar mission needs to be undertaken as proof of concept first.(Mars Direct would be better but we'll take what we can get) The privately funded X-prize competition has placed the ball into the private sector's court. A ballistic sub orbital toss into space with a 14- day turn around before repeating the same sub orbital flight again. While it may capture the world’s attention briefly, it should also focus attention on NASA's lack of progress in the development of manned space flight abdicating leadership and ceding the vanguard to the private sector. We need to be manufacturing in orbit, the things we need to colonize space.. how can we do that without reliable , cost efficient launch systems? We have had 30 years..Its time to bring things to a halt and take a serious look at where we have been, where we want to go and what its going to take to get there. Salute the past and then grasp the reins and lead on to the future. First a launch system less complex more efficient, second an expanded space station committed to the building in orbit of technologies in support of manned Lunar and Mars missions. La Grange points, Space Elevators and more unmanned missions would have to wait. We need to get control of the monolith that is NASA and all of the funding that it uses and start directing the development in a War time footing effort to make a manned mars mission a reality within THIS decade or you can wait another 30 years for nothing to happen. ------------ About the author: Stan Bernard lives in Edmonton Alberta, Canada. Stan writes, poetry, lyrics and short stories. His poetry has won recognition on CBC Radio, and local artist Dale Ladouceur has recorded and released a cd featuring his work... "Prayer for the Forest". Email Stan: bernard_stan@yahoo.com Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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