Space Communes
There's an article over at wired regarding Bush's proposed space plans, well, an opinion anyways.
Excerpt:
Whatever the pros and cons may be of President Bush's newfound enthusiasm for the U.S. space program, one thing should be obvious: Any permanent space station on the moon needs to be an international undertaking.
I don't really see how it's obvious at all. We kinda tried the "huge space project as an international public relations project" under Clinton, and while it was an interesting idea (from an international relations POV), it didn't really go well and hampered the original goals of the station in a big way.
You can google on that if you'd like, and you'll pull it all up. Long and short, we basically paid for almost everything anyways, but the project got delayed over and over for redesigns to allow the other modules to be able to connect, went drastically over budget... and was never able to do much actual science. I mean hell, at one point NASA was having to talk about paying Russia $600+ million just to complete what it said it would.
So I guess you'd have to define the goals: actual science, and getting the damn thing done, or politically-oriented international group hug.
I'm really disappointed Wired even ran it: I don't have a problem with someone thinking that the group hug route would be the best long term, but that opinion piece is just poorly done.
Anyways...
There's a much better article (that's actually interesting, instead of an excuse to toss in words like USA & hegemony & insanity & bush & nazi's in the same story) about the new plan: that it might be a trojan horse for retiring the shuttle program and allowing a transition to cheaper, and probably safer alternatives.
Posted by drunkenbatmanJanuary 17, 2004, at 04:52 AM
