Tuesday 9 February 2010

An Alternate Space Program

An alternate history - sort of:

This was the reality - some 5 years later

And then this, 10-20 years later:

But that was over 45 years ago. After this year, the US as a nation will no longer have the ability to put people in space, and the deputy head of NASA has said that she "hopes" that Americans will return to the Moon in her lifetime. No guarantees though - and it may be as late as 2050.

2 comments:

Tamara Jeanne said...

Having grown up during the 60's - 70's, I've watched the US manned space program grow from the before the beginning of the Mercury manned space program. I remember all the excitement of getting up early in the morning to watch the fist launches of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo’s moon landings and the Shuttle. I still have a map of Freedom 7’s flight path and a 45 rpm recording of the first moon landing. Like so many other children, I was inspired by the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey and the TV show Star Trek and the hundreds of science fiction books I read and dreamed of being an astronaut and a large human presence in outer space.

I’ve seen all of the incredible technological advances and far reaching benefits that the development of America’s manned space flight program has brought human kind. I had hopped that we would have had a base on the moon and ether been to Mars by now or would have been well along the path to getting there.

I find it a sad state to see that the USA will very soon have no manned spaceflight capability after the finial few shuttle flights are over and will have to become dependent on hitching rides from the Russians in the near term and perhaps the French, Chinese, Japanese and for profit corporations in the very near future. We need a manned space program and to keep moving forward to the goals of establishing a permanent presence in space.

Anonymous said...

Thought you'd like this:

Carl