As we start to mark the 40th Anniversary of man’s first trip to another world, one of the men who went there says we need to start reaching for the stars again:
On the spring morning in 1927 when Charles Lindbergh set off alone across the Atlantic Ocean, only a handful of explorer-adventurers were capable of even attempting the feat. Many had tried before Lindbergh’s successful flight, but all had failed and many lost their lives in the process. Most people then thought transatlantic travel was an impossible dream. But 40 years later, 20,000 people a day were safely flying the same route that the “Lone Eagle” had voyaged. Transatlantic flight had become routine.
Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and I began our quarter-million-mile journey through the blackness of space to reach the moon.
Neil and I walked its dusty ancient soil, becoming the first humans to stand upon another world. Yet today, no nation — including our own — is capable of sending anyone beyond Earth’s orbit, much less deeper into space.
For the past four years, NASA has been on a path to resume lunar exploration with people, duplicating (in a more complicated fashion) what Neil, Mike and our colleagues did four decades ago. But this approach — called the “Vision for Space Exploration” — is not visionary; nor will it ultimately be successful in restoring American space leadership. Like its Apollo predecessor, this plan will prove to be a dead end littered with broken spacecraft, broken dreams and broken policies.
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Let the lunar surface be the ultimate global commons while we focus on more distant and sustainable goals to revitalize our space program. Our next generation must think boldly in terms of a goal for the space program: Mars for America’s future. I am not suggesting a few visits to plant flags and do photo ops but a
journey to make the first homestead in space: an American colony on a new world.
It’s a tempting idea, one as visionary as President Kennedy’s original call to put a man on the moon.
The limited government fiscal conservative in me says we can’t afford to do this.
The human being says we can’t afford not to.
Lets take back all the stimulus money from companies that should have gone bankrupt add that to the rest of the stimulus money that hasn’t been spent yet and go build a base on mars.
I have a feeling that might create some jobs…
Yes, we can afford not to. People on Mars will be pretty useless, since they won’t be able to use most of their five senses at all over there. Let’s stick to robots with high-tech sensors – they do a much better job than austronauts ever could.
Moving off-planet is going to have to be similar to moving off-continent back in the 15th century. Economically driven at first, an exploitation of valuable resources. Then, as the ability to actually make the trip becomes more routine and less esoteric, people will start to think about things like colonization.
Expecting the U.S. gov’t to solve something this vast is pure fantasy. There has to be a reason for the infrastructure to develop – like fishing off the coast of America in the early 1600’s. And let’s not forget centuries of learning how to sail that led up to that.
[...] which might trump them all for going to Mars: Because it’s there. I am sympathetic to Doug Mataconis on this one: It’s a tempting idea, one as visionary as President Kennedy’s original call to put [...]
Oops. Make that 17th century.