So, America plans to go back to the moon by 2020. This is excellent news in itself although it does raise a few questions:
Will 15 years be long enough? If, after every problem a two year hiatus ensues while they try to figure out what went wrong, this could seem very optimistic.
Will they be beaten by any other country? Certainly when it comes to spending a long time in space, the Russians are many miles ahead of the USA? And their launch facilities are rarely hit by hurricanes.
But fundamentally, there is the cost issue. This is not going to be the cheapest project in the history of mankind. With the recent spate of disasters that the USA (as well as others) have faced, there has got to be a question as to whether this is the best use of funding. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for going back to the moon and making a mess of it like we've done down here, but I hope the business case has a really watertight argument to justify itself.
But what scares me most of all is when the chief scientist describes the new launch vehicle as "Apollo on steroids".
Monday, September 19, 2005
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2 comments:
You're picking up the spam here hon
Do you know what I think would be really cool? I think we should go to the moon, claim it for ourselves (we used to be good at that - "Do you have a flag?") and write the words "Ya boo America, your president is a monkey" in deep troughs that will last millions of years :)
That bbc link you give says that the U.S. is planning on reusing the lander up to 10 times. We all know how well that has turned out for the shuttle! Whatever they do, it'll be good television.
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