(Untitled)

[prog]

Me am sad that people are being cynical about future moon & Mars missions because Bush is vocally backing them, and therefore something stinksOf course by "people" I mean Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, and I dunno how effective a barometer he is, but one could make the argument

Comments

something stinks!

[leahleaf]

i have to thoughts on the subject:

one, that any sort of permanent moon base will be used for the housing of suspected terrorists. guantanamo bay on the moon! and so what if we haven't worked out all kinks in space-related travel, who will miss another few hundred suspected terrorists if their transport vehicle blows up on the way. to the moon! god's amurca on the mooooooon!

and two, that david icke guy was right and current and past world leaders are really reptilian sympathizers working to bring about a new world order, the space program is just a coverup to slowly reveal to the eventually-microchipped masses what they have known for years! look, we've made interplanetary contact with these guys. PREPARE TO BE COLONIZED

personally i don't see any harm in, say, coming up with a long-term plan for the country's finances before promoting Grand Visions For The Future and then not actually directing any money or resources towards them, whether they are available or not. (see: no child left behind)

[ex_colorwhe]

Hmm, I saw that Daily Show too and just assumed Jon was being his usual facetious self, not especially being cynical about space exploration personally. I think his MO is "comedy first." Any chance he could be trusting us to know that serious things lurk underneath?

On the other hand, he's not always "comedy first" with politicians, so maybe you're right. Carol Mosely Braun tonight, I think; we'll see.

Did you see the Nova about Mars exploration? It was awesome, and I still have it on tape-shmape if anyone wants to see it.

[dougo]

I'm all for space exploration and settlement, just NOT NOW. It seems like a really bad time to be focusing a lot of attention on that. It'd be like Hoover proposing a moon shot (or something equivalently grandiose and long-term) in 1932. It seems solely politically motivated. Also, what little I heard about the plans included scrapping the International Space Station, which sounds kind of ridiculous to me. Let's keep going with that, and rehabilitate our shuttle program, and then maybe 20-30 years from now we'll go to Mars for fun.

Also, I'm surprised a Republican wouldn't want to encourage privatized space flight. Or maybe that's too much of a security threat?

[keimel]

It'd be like Kennedy saying "We'll put a man on the moon before the end of the decade!"

Here, you've got eight and a half years, make it happen.

Granted, the political conditions are in many ways different, we don't have duck and cover drills now but we do have poeple confiscating nail clippers in the airport. I suppose discussing current political climes in comparison with other times is much like "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

I disagree with several things King George II has done (that li'l scavenger hunt for WMD's is the big one), but a commitment to the space program is good. The benefits of both the space program and our nations military programs on the rest of our technological world have been immense and I'm not just talkin bout tang and MRE's. (well, MRE's are good to throw at unruly cow-orkers)

Ok... stopping rant... go with that Kennedy thing above.

[prog]

A more important diff between now and 40 years ago is the lack of competition. We were in a very literal race to the top, back then, and you could very reasonably argue that it was a matter not just of national pride, but national defense (whee, orbital bombardment). Now we have a vast lead over any nation that might want to pick a new space race with us, so you can make the argument (as some here have) that talk of a Mars-shot nothing more than a ploy to get more Americans to look up and pay less attention to all the mess at their feet, at least through November

[dougo]

I think an even huger difference is that the early '60s was at the peak of national unity and prosperity and forward-thinking-ness. Yes, there were plenty of things wrong-- the cold war, racial inequities, lack of attention to the environment, etc-- but by and large things were going pretty smoothly and it was a good time to dream (and Kennedy was an eloquent dreamer). Right now things are more chaotic than they've been in (relative) peacetime since the Depression, and it's almost certainly going to get worse before it gets better.

I'm cribbing a lot of my ideas about history and zeitgeist from Generations (and other books) by William Strauss and Neil Howe. A lot of the details of what they say seem wrong or tenuous (and a lot of their jargon and rhetoric is super pretentious), but their basic premise, that the generational cycle repeats itself roughly every 80 years, is very compelling. It's hard not to see the events of the last five years or so through the lens of their theory (first published in 1991).

monkeys

[temvald]

see my other response on this subject:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/mildmannered/5190.html

(a joke ripped off directly from jon stewart, i might add.)

basically, it's not that i'm cynical about the prospects for a moon and mars mission. it's that i'm cynical about _any_ project implemented by this administration. it's the 'everything they touch turns to shit' principle. and, since i'd sort of like to see a mars mission succeed someday, i have to oppose starting one now.

Bizarro Lois Lane am such a COLDIE

[cramerica]

Though personally in favor of colonizing (and then freeing) Mars, I think of Bush's proposal as the "Hey Look Over There Ha Ha Made You Look Initiative". Somebody else said it better, though:

"The Bush Space Initiative is a laudable diversion and an eloquent testimony to the historic role that chimps have played in the American space program, but it will only get off the ground if some genius finds a way to fuel rockets with red ink."
(from
Dem Underground), natch).

[cortezopossum]

I've seen a few other opinion polls about missions to mars and they seem to agree that the majority of people aren't supports of this idea and felt the money could be better spent elsewhere. The same, however, was true with opinion polls back in the 60's about going to the Moon.

I actually support the idea of a manned mission to Mars however I don't like the idea of a moon base being used as a 'stepping stone' for it. We don't need a moon base or space platform for a Mars mission -- it's actually physically inefficient to do so. It sounds like they're still bumbling around with basic fundamentals of 'how are we going to get there' when that question has already been well thought out.

I remember that episode of Super-Friends... I thought that villan was a short-sighted jerk and deserved a super-wedgie.