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December 31, 2004
NASA Still Ambitious
Florida NSS member Jason Rhian had the following letter published in the Tampa Tribune, December 29th, 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.
NASA Still Ambitious
Nice to see the Trib is blasting NASA again. The Dec. 21 cartoon again shows that those in the media just don't get it. NASA does have a large ambition; you need ambition to go to other worlds. As for its management being too small for the task, well, the Trib hasn't followed the change NASA's been undergoing.
Not long ago NASA did little to help free enterprise in space; it now
encourages it. NASA once dreaded the death of the shuttle; now it views the shuttle as dead weight. A new age is dawning at NASA. The NASA shown in the cartoon was the ``old'' NASA. Now NASA is transforming itself into what it should be. We should celebrate that, not belittle it.
JASON RHIAN Plant City
Posted by apsmith at 02:44 AM
It's about time we return to the moon
Keith Wick, an NSS member in Minnesota, had the following letter published in the Duluth News Tribune, January 17th 2004. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
It's about time we return to the moon
Regarding the announcement by President Bush regarding a commitment and timeline for building a permanent base on the moon:
Many will argue that we have too many problems here at home to "waste" a ton of money on going back to the moon. Others will say, "Why go back to the barren, desolate moon? Mars is where it's at!"
My take: If we wait until all of our social problems are solved, we will never go to the moon. We will never evolve into a space-faring civilization. Humanity will never blossom and the tremendous potential endowed in us by our creator will never be realized. We'll just sit here on Earth until we destroy ourselves or until our sun reaches the end of its main sequence. Then we fry.
We must go to the moon. The difficulty of sending people to the moon will force the development of better launchers and space infrastructure. There is no better test bed than the moon for hardware that would be needed on a future mission to Mars. Also, the far side of our moon is the best place in the solar system to put a radio telescope, in that radio interference from Earth is blocked by the moon itself. Optical astronomy will also benefit greatly from clear skies and much larger primary mirrors.
Solar energy is tremendously abundant -- there's never a cloud in the sky.
My reaction to the president's plan: It's about time! Indeed, we should be celebrating the 25th anniversary of our permanent presence on the moon by now. Still, it's not too late to go for it!
KEITH WICK
GRAND RAPIDS
Posted by apsmith at 01:06 AM