NASA Takes A Step Back With Orion November 6, 2007
Posted by showmescifi in scifi.Tags: NASA, Orion, Science, science fiction, scifi, space
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Remember when the Shuttle was first rolled out? Wasn’t that cool? Futuristic?
Well NASA is now going backwards and is rolling out its next generation manned space transport and its a total throwback to the Gemini capsule days.
It’s a SAD SAD SAD day for Space science and the manned exploration of space.
Show Me SciFi 
Very true. They should be building an improved shuttle for local trips, “space-only” vehicles that dock at the space station for the middle of the trips, and lander types to bring along on missions.
However, this is a low-risk design for a particular (albiet odd) mission. The only noteworthy point in favor of moon visits I’ve heard of is the potential to gather Helium-3 rich soil for use in low-neutron emission Fusion devices (which are more stable than their standard Fusion cousins). This is a blip on Nasa’s list of reasons to go to the moon. Most of their goals can be achieved in other ways. Wouldn’t it be smarter to make the space station into a real “station” and getting man up into space with the right technology?
Have we taken a step back?? Seems like over a half century ago, we were looking to the future for innovations like commercial Super-Sonic travel to cut travel times (ie. Concorde), and re-usable space crafts (ie. Space Shuttle). Its also a trend socially. We were looking for equal human rights, and freedom for all (or so it was told).
Why is the world’s largest super-power policing the world, and setting its gov’t up under a totalitarian regime (ie. if you are against the gov’t, you a terrorist and will be sent to a prison where your rights are bypassed for the “good of the state”), as well as killing all progress we had to advance ourselves as a race? Isn’t this why we were told to fear the Nazi’s, the Russians, and now terrorists? Who’s next? Aliens? Is that a good reason to militarize space?
If Aliens were ever a big threat, they would have destroyed us a VERY long time ago. We should concentrate on figuring out the problems we have IN our world, without bring them to the OUTSIDE world.
Just my 2c (your 1.8c US).