When I first heard news of this budget, I was devastated. How can the government just cancel the Constellation Program (which had a very successful first flight just a few months ago) and leave our country with no manned space flight capability after the retirement of the Space Shuttle? Yes, they are going to use commercial companies to get to the ISS (which I do support), but with nothing else really in the works, what do we do after that? How do we get back to the Moon? How do we get to Mars? Yes, the plan seems to be that NASA will research and slowly develop some new heavy lift rocket (though not Ares V as the Constellation Program envisioned), but why start over? What’s so wrong with Constellation? We’re just going to throw it all away and set everything back another decade? Ridiculous!

The space program gives us a national prowess, it gives us national pride. This is something that I don’t think we’ll get with just using commercial companies. Don’t get me wrong, I love SpaceX and other companies like them, and I encourage their use for getting cargo and crew to and from the ISS. But NASA still should be working on a new spacecraft in the mean time to take us beyond Low Earth Orbit – to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. They claim that this is still going to happen, but that is nowhere near certain in this budget. I just don’t see the need to completely cancel Constellation and start over. I think this is bad policy and will only serve to set back the US space program for decades. We will be sitting on the sidelines while China, Russia, and others spread out into the cosmos without us.

I may be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. But the current future of NASA and our US space program that I can see is a bleak one. And this leaves me very, very depressed.

And a Merry Christmas it is this year for Boeing, who earlier this month had the first test flight of the 787! Congratulations Boeing!

The next time somebody complains about the cost of human spaceflight and the ISS, just remind them of things like this.

“I’m a biker,” Captain Z explained of his quirky motorcycle stickers. And what about the pink stickers on the bag?

He smiled and said: “Those are for my daughter.”

The flight bag is an essential piece of gear for any pilot to carry, from weekend hobbyist pilots to professional airline pilots. The bag contains your logbook, charts, flight computer(s), essential manuals, a flashlight, and anything else you might need during the flight. Author Jonathan Littman posts about his experience meeting a pilot and his “bag”.

The sad thing is that no other person has walked on the moon since Eugene Cernan stepped back onto the LEM at the conclusion of Apollo 17’s moon walks. The moon has been there the whole time, but we haven’t gone back. I wish that we would. The US is beginning to lag behind the rest of the civilized world in our scientific prowess, and this must be righted. I believe that if we were to embark on a new moon “race”, the benefits could be enormous. It would get young people interested in science again. It would invest money in science and engineering and produce untold new “spinoffs” that would be of benefit to all mankind. It would once again inspire the world and show that we can do great things when we put our minds to it.

So this is my challenge to our leaders both political and scientific (with deference to President Kennedy for the wording):

I believe this nation should commit itself, before the year 2025, to returning man to the moon, to establishing a permanent lunar outpost, and to use that lunar outpost as a staging ground for the first manned mission to the planet Mars.

Do we have the ability as a nation to do this? We most certainly do. Do we have the will? I hope so. Happy 40th Anniversary Apollo 11!

Updated (9:56 pm): “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Note: Since this is my first award, I’ve created a new awards section you can navigate to from the top menu.

Tripbase Blog Awards 2009