Monday 1 February 2010

LUNA ELUDES US ONCE MORE..

Like a bashful lover, Luna slips behind the clouds of uncertainty again.
I know I'm a total space anorak, but I'm so disappointed that President Obama is cancelling Constellation, the Lunar Landing project.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8489097.stm
If we don't go back to the moon, we're never going to know a whole bunch of things, and we'll certainly never develop the technology to send men to Mars in the next 50 years.
Yet more generations will never know the thrill we felt in the 60s and 70s when space "firsts" happened, it seemed, almost weekly.
Ed White's Gemini space walk. Apollo 8 on the Dark Side of the Moon (sprobably why I love Floyd and mistrust REM...) and the first landing itself. Huge childhood memories.
We'll miss the chance to find out conclusively whether we could, for example, "manufacture" water on the lunar surface. Whether Helium 3 Buckyballs just might be a viable way to create an artificial "atmosphere". How far human bodies could adapt to alien atmosphere in the longer-term. What a Big Mac tastes like on the moon.
Most importantly, if noone has the guts to commit to Constellation or a similar manned lunar programme, ALL the astronauts who actually left low-earth orbit, struck out for deep space and stepped onto the surface of the moon will soon have gone.
We will lose the remaining pioneers of that all-too-brief, shining period. Neil Armstrong, Al Bean, John Young, Charlie Duke et al; plus the genius of mission control: teams who masterminded the lunar expeditions micron by micron.
In a short time, the legacy of their first-hand experience will be gone forever.
This too must be factored into any decision about the rights and wrongs of returning to the moon.
I'm glad that the major "space states" will be opposing President Obama's doubtless pragmatic but unimaginative and shortsighted proposal to cut the project.
Let's hope for the sake of our children and grandchildren and the joy of exploration for its own sake that they win through.

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