Very Serious Question about New Moon Project

[pnziii]

Maybe I just misunderstood the time frame, but the President is calling for a lunar landing as "early" as 2015.

That means NASA is going to take 11 years to get to the moon.

Doesn't that seem odd to anyone?
When President Kennedy went before congress May 25, 1961 and declared man will be on the moon, we had the first man there on July 20, 1969.
Apparently the fledgling NASA with little previous experience with manned space flight at that time only took a little over 8 years to get to the moon.
In fact the world went from the first space flight (unmanned Sputnik) in October 4, 1957 to landing on the moon in just under 12 years.

So now with all the advances in technology, super computers, and having the experience of landing on the moon already, it's going to take longer to get back there than it did the first time.

What's wrong with this picture?

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. The date can't be any earlier than 2009...

Bush only promises -- balanced budgets, sunsetted tax cuts, cleaner cars, etc. etc. -- what other people have to deliver.

[Arbustosux]

9. He doesn't actually promise anything....

He throws out ideas at this time of the year to see if any stick with the American public...

Remember last year? Hydrogen powered cars and helping sex slaves...how much effort has he made on any of those?

[mouse7]

2. Saturn was designed when Kennedy announce Moon program

The Saturn rocket was already off the drawing board when Kennedy made the announcement.

We now have to design a new space vehicle almost from scratch.

[pnziii]

8. doesn't make a difference

We built the Saturn 5 rockets just a year or two before.
Sputnik was in 1957. Went from nothing to landing on the moon in 12 years.

[pmbryant]

3. Money money money

Bush doesn't want to pony up any significant dough himself. He's only committing a measly $1 billion in new money to this for the next five years.

This for a project that many estimate will cost over 500 billion dollars!

So asking for an earlier date than 2015 would immediately put this funding schedule into question and force him to either admit this is just a ruse, or to cough up more dough.

--Peter

[Arbustosux]

11. He learned this from his daddy...

You inflate your military budget (because of the imminent attack from terrorists), then you shift funds from one account to another (ala Iran/Contra).

I will bet the military ends up paying most of this grand plan...can anyone say Missle Defense System?

[Arbustosux]

4. He is recommending

A total scrapping of the Space Shuttle program and the design of a new vehicle for space travel. In addition, it will take at least that long to answer many unanswered questions, such as how can the astronauts tolerate high radioactivity for extended periods of time.

Oh, and Halliburton has to be given enough time to design and build the permanent moon base.

[Rex]

5. This is just another distraction

Remember in his SOTUS speech when he went off on funding alternative sources of fuel for cars? Neither does anyone else.

Bush is all hat and no cattle.

[Syrinx]

6. In my opinion,

Bush doesn't give a damn about space exploration. It's just a big scheme to funnel tax money to his daddy's companies.

[meisje]

7. well

Bush knows it's not going to happen and does not want a possible future republican president to have to deal with it. You've got Bush through 2008, then comes Jeb... Make the people happy for now, but put it out so far that it can never come back to bite him.

[PsychoDad]

10. Bush's plan....

In my opinion, is a smoke screen, a diversion to attempt to keep public notice away from his failed wars and economy... The time table in engernered to allow folks to forget about it in about 10 years.

But beside that, we would still need to design and build launch vehciles capable of launching a payload to the moon. (Like the saturn 5). The US currently doesn't have anything like that. The soviets have the energia, if we wanted to do a quick program, I guess we could go that route.

Funding the operation would be another problem, with the eternal war on Terror, and assorted small countries. If we stoped the wars, and redirected a large portion of the pentagon budget, I believe it would be in our grasp.....

But not right now.