NASA says, "Yes Sir!"

My friend Dave over at Get Dirty recently mentioned NASA's lack of anything encouraging in our journey into Space. There has been some good news though: The Constellation class Ares 1 spacecraft has passed one review bringing it closer to being completed and ready for crew. With a small leap technologically, we are no longer throwing stones into a world of phasers and photon beams. We are throwing darts.

Image: Test engineer Alonzo Frost checks the level on a model of the crew module and launch vehicle stack during testing at Marshall’s Aerodynamics Research Facility. Credit: NASA/MSFC


Considering NASA's fiscal problems I think it's smart to spend the resources on researching and reviewing more efficient ways to fling ourselves into the dark abyss enveloping our planet, here on Earth. There's a reason we sent as many people in 2004 as we did in 1961, and it has a lot to do with mortality and religion. Disasters in the past have scared away many a spender because most every Shuttle Launch is televised. We watched the disasters of the Challenger and Columbia, some of us live, and the rest in the days to follow on our televisions. Those images still ripple through the mind of the public. You know flying into Space scares the bajezuses out of the born-again fundamentalist. That's just a fact. There are people today who believe it's all been shot in a Hollywood studio and that Heaven is really only forty miles up. Watching those horrific images on their T.V.'s sealed the deal for a lot of them and vowed never to let the Government spend their tax dollars killing national heroes on television. A tragedy in many ways, and may have adhered us to good ole terra firma for longer than we planed on originally. If we do start construction on a Moon base by 2020, I'll be surprised. I remain skeptical.