General Discussion
Showing Original Post only (View all)We should have been colonizing the solar system by now. [View all]
In 1969 when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon everyone expected that we would keep going farther. But then in the mid 70s NASA got mauled by the small-minded deficit hawks who thought they did not need to keep up NASA's funding because we beat those Evil Commie Russians and that's all that mattered. It seems like all of a sudden nobody cared anymore, some even started bashing space exploration using the equally small-minded "we have more important things to do here on terra firma" argument.
I wonder if the Vietnam War and Watergate are to blame, destroying the belief in Big Government doing Big Things, making NASA a victim of the same rise of selfish Individualism that lead to the late 70s "tax revolts" in California and the election of Reagan in 1980. I suspect that also, among us on the Left that the strain of technophobic misanthropy found among many Green types who believe in the philosophy of Deep Ecology has something to do with it, thus the posts here on DU decrying space exploration as spreading the "cancer" of humanity.
According to astrophysicist Robert Zubrin a 3-year manned mission to Mars would cost $30 billion per mission and is perfectly feasible with today's technology. That is chump change compared to the "Defense" budget, and we would not have to pay all of that if it is set up as a multi-national mission. The problem is a lack of will. people either dogmatically assert that such a mission is either impossible, too expensive, or immoral, and all of those assertions are bullshit.