Why The Space Race Fizzled...

[rickstine]

,the space race did not fizzle in a short term effect and I'm not saying going to the moon ways not a big achievement. What I mean is NASA failed to keep public interest some fourty years ago,and was supposed to lead mankind towards the heavens. But fourty years plus we are in the information age in which the tools that are changing are lives are not rocketry, but software and microchips. Microchips has improved many parts of are lives from safer cars to getting information faster which has done a lot of good for us all. NASA and the government disbanded it's goals with false promises after public interest became less concerned. Now space tech. is sort of a secondary usage and is only applied for a certain purpose like medical purposes which is a good thing in its self. Remember when people said by the year two thousand people will have colonized the moon, but yet we are still here all on Earth. Space technology has improved are lives from preserving foods to last longer, to medicine, to the cars we drive, to G.P.S. all space race technologies. It takes time before people realized how they could apply new technoloy to a every day use for the average person. The same can still be today, when NASA says it will take millions to put stuff into space much is true, but if they put a little at a time it comes out cheap. Remember when NASA lunched space missions to Mars around the mid 90's saying cheaper and more missions will allow them to explore Mars, but what happened all them failed from software glitches or mechanical problems, you really can't expect much if you cheap out on things like this. The space shuttle is one cool thing, but it's outdated in terms of escaping Earth's gravity by using large amount of rocket fuel, and when I say outdated I mean from the mid 90's and onward. NASA could lunched a space ship into orbit by dropping it in mid flight underneath a large aircraft, which is good but it won't carry much of a pay load or use magnetic catapult which can

 

[absolutezero]

I think there are multiple reasons for the failure.<br /><br />1. The bulk of our primitive public could not comprehend the wonders and benefits of space travel; they simply would rather spend those tax dollars on social problems which, yes, still plague us to this day!<br /><br />2. The competition was crushed, there for there was not a need to the top government brass to continue funding a group of guys hoping in a desert with low gravity. Which of course, we all realize its not just that, but that’s what it was probably considered.<br /><br />3. If we would have continued the current pace we were accomplishing things, we would have been to Mars by the 1990’s and who knows how advanced we would have been by now. Stupid tax dollars. :-/<br />

 

[dragon04]

The space race was largely an "Us vs. Them" issue. A direct consequence and result of the Cold War.<br /><br />There is no longer a political impetus to drive a space race.<br /><br />National pride is insufficient justification. Lack of clear vision and purpose is detrimental to getting the "primitive public" onboard the space program.<br /><br />And while I personally wish NASA's yearly budget was tripled, it's very hard to argue that the money wouldn't be better spent ensuring health care for every American, for example.<br /><br />I'm afraid that NASA has its complicity in the decline of the "space race" as well. <br /><br />IMHO, they've done a poor job bringing space to the "Average American". While televised shuttle launches are dramatic and very cool to watch, they alone aren't going to put fire in the bellies of the everyday American taxpayer.<br /><br />Our UNmanned space efforts have been very successful. Perhaps TOO successful. We can plop rovers down on Mars virtually at will and at far less cost.<br /><br />Personally, I want to see men and women set foot on Mars. Why? To paraphrase JFK, "because it's there".<br /><br />But that's a very arbitrary reason to accelerate our manned space program.<br /><br />And let's put this into the proper perspective. The "primitive public" may not understand the wonders and benefits of space travel, but is anyone here willing to donate half their yearly income every year to NASA if they promise to put feet on Mars by 2015?<br /><br />Probably not.<br /><br />We're not out of natural resources. There is no known planet killing asteroid aimed at us anytime soon. There is no doomsday reason to evacuate Planet Earth tomorrow.<br /><br />I'm very afraid I was born 100 years too soon. I'll die in a "Dark Age" of manned space exploration without some miracle or reason to venture out. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <em>"2012.. Year of the Dragon!! Get on the Dragon Wagon!".</em> </div>