The Pink Flamingo :: Buzz Aldrin, NASA, Mars & Our Future

Buzz Aldrin is right. If we don't invest in NASA, the Chinese are going to beat us to the Moon and to Mars. Space is our future. As usual, we are piddling it away, to pinch pennies. I am terrified if Barack Obama is elected it is going to be more of the same - just dump the space program and put everything in welfare programs.

The UK Telegraph

"... Mr Aldrin revealed that he intends to lobby Barack Obama and John McCain, the two US presidential candidates, in an effort to ensure they find sufficient funds for Nasa's goal to establish a permanent base on the Moon and then send a manned mission to Mars....Mr Aldrin, 78, said: "To me it's abysmal that it has come to this: after 50 years of Nasa, and after putting about $100 billion into the space station, we can't get our own astronauts to our space station without relying on the Russians."

He said his message to the next president is this: "Retain the vision for space exploration. If we turn our backs on the vision again, we're going to have to live in a secondary position in human space flight for the rest of the century."

He added: "These are important issues for consideration by the potential leaders of our country. They're not welcome criticisms for the present heads of NASA."

Earlier this month Rick Gilbreth, the head of the space agency's lunar exploration programme, warned that Chinese astronauts were on schedule to get to the moon by 2017 or 2018, two or three years before America is due to return.

Mr Aldrin said: "All the Chinese have to do is fly around the Moon and back, and they'll appear to have won the return to the Moon with humans. They could put one person on the surface of the Moon for one day and he'd be a national hero."

China only put its first astronaut into space in 2003 and its ambitions are more limited than NASA's, but a Chinese moon landing before America's would be a serious blow to morale in the US space industry....Mr Aldrin is critical of Nasa's failure properly to fund commercial ventures for spacecraft which could take astronauts to the space station between 2010 and 2015. He said: "If we really wanted that to happen, we sure should have started putting more money into that programme sooner."

It is all a far cry from the national pride that accompanied the Apollo programme, in which Mr Aldrin followed Neil Armstrong on to the surface of the Moon in July, 1969.

Now he wants Nasa to generate the same kind of enthusiasm as it mustered during the 1960s. "It's good for morale," he said. "The biggest benefit of Apollo was the inspiration it gave to a growing generation to get into science and aerospace. Are we inspiring the workforce now to work on the things we need? No!"

Mr Aldrin is also critical of the approach taken by NASA in commissioning new crew vehicles that will splash down on water, rather than on a runway like the Shuttle. He says that is the best design for a moon vehicle, but will not encourage other ventures into space.

In particular, it will not be suitable for short flights into low orbits, of a kind that could be used for space tourism - potentially a valuable new source of revenue for NASA. "Americans have been watching for over 25 years spacecraft coming back and landing on a runway," he said. "It is going to be a bitter disappointment to people here."

Meanwhile Russia may adapt and enlarge its own Soyuz spacecraft in order to accommodate tourists, giving them an effective monopoly of travel into low earth orbit..."

The House has approved additional funding for NASA, but as usual it isn't enough. It never is.

Let's put it this way, if Phoenix has discovered that the Martian soil could grow turnips, then we're getting somewhere. Our future is in the exploration of space. We need "space to grow". Gene Cernan is very concerned about Barack Obama's plans for space.

"...Now, with the current plan to retire the shuttle in 2010, the US faces another lengthy gap in manned capability, ahead of the 'no sooner than' Orion missions in 2015/2016. This new gap concerns Captain Cernan, who was available for an interview during his media promotion of the Discovery Channel's series 'When We Left Earth'. - Also see the specific pages for reaction to the series.
'The gap bothers me quiet a bit, because we're going to be at the mercy of other people - you know who they are (the Russians) - and I'm just not too comfortable with that quite frankly,' responded Captain Cernan to my question about the gap, adding that he would support the shuttle's proposed manifest extension.

'I'm not sure what we do about it. There's been some talk about additional funding and extending the shuttle, and it's amazing to be even considering at this point in time that the shuttle is obsolete, because it does the job. If it works, we might use it for a while.
'Having been to the moon twice - and I don't want to sound arrogant about this - staying at home isn't good enough, but the fact of life that the only place we've got to go is in Earth orbit, and the shuttle is the only way of getting there.

'So I would like to see it funded a little bit further, to maintain our ability of access to the International Space Station (ISS).' Cernan also added that he's an admirer of the shuttle, and wishes he still had the opportunity to ride onboard with an orbiter - if only for a couple of days. 'I'd love to fly the shuttle today. I don't want to spend two weeks travelling around the Earth, as I've done that, but I'd like to fly the shuttle for a day or two and run her through her paces. The shuttle is still the greatest flying machine that we've ever designed, built, and flown and I haven't had the chance to fly one.' As noted by Constellation management and even NASA administrator Mike Griffin, simply extending the shuttle does not close the gap, given it would mean another two years the Ares and Orion programs would be without the huge percentage of the NASA budget which is eaten up by the shuttle program.

Captain Cernan understands that concern, and should such an extension fail to be funded at a rate that would not be to the detriment of the Constellation program, his priority remains with returning to the moon. 'I don't want to (extend the shuttle) at the expense of taking funds away from Constellation, because I'm one of those firm and strong believers that we must go back to the moon, and we must go beyond...."

CERNAN ON MCCAIN & OBAMA

"...A specific political target for Captain Cernan was Obama's current policy of installing a five year hiatus in the Constellation program, to allow the diversion of funds into a proposed education program, which - in Cernan's opinion - is one of a number of reasons he is not a supporter of the Illinois Senator. 'Depending on how the election goes, Obama's already said he's going to slow down the space program - and I think it'll go further than that, I think it'll be slowed down for a decade or so and I don't believe anything will happen - and he'll use the money for education. I just told you how I feel about that. 'So I'm not too excited about him, for a number of reasons quiet frankly - lots of reasons actually, politically and on ideology and on the space program - I'm just not too excited about the potential of him being the president of the United States.

Cernan, a retired United States Navy Captain, was assigned to Attack Squadrons 26 and 112 at the Miramar Naval Air Station. He has logged more than 5000 hours flying time with more than 4800 hours in jet aircraft and over 200 jet aircraft carrier landings. His career in the US forces has led to a certain amount of respect for John McCain - the Republican presidential candidate, adding that both candidates need to understand the power behind the decisions made by former president John F. Kennedy - mainly due to the current situation with the space program and the American political climate. 'John McCain, as a kid, had the same dreams as I did. He wanted to fly planes off aircraft carriers, so somewhere down in John McCain's heart was a dream about wanting to fly, and I think he's got a better appreciation for the significance of technology in the free world and the continuation (of the US) to be the leader in the free world.

'(For example) let me take you back to 1961. Sputnik had flown a couple of years earlier. Yuri Gagarin had flow a couple of orbits of the Earth in the April of 1961 - and the rest of the free world was looking at the US saying 'what are you going to do about it?'
'We were a country torn apart by civil unrest and campus strikes, at the beginning of a very unpopular war, and in May - the next month after Gagarin - Alan Sheppard, the first American in space, went up and down....'I know a lot of POWs (Prisoners of War), I don't know John McCain very well, but you can ask a lot of POWs, and God bless their souls as they gave six or seven years of their life for this country, and felt they were doing the right thing, as they were doing what they had been asked to do.

'(You can ask them about the) stories coming back about these POWs about getting a little package of sugar with a picture of an astronaut with an American flag on the moon. They didn't know who, they didn't know when, but they knew it had been done, and they knew we had done it. 'I've got friends who were over there who've told me 'Gene, that gave me inspiration to live and endure for as long as it took to get out of here. 'So was the Apollo program worth it in dollars? Look what it did to this country when we needed something to be proud of, and quite frankly I'm not sure if we're not in the same place today as we were then. 'That's another reason I'm so passionate about us being the technological leader of the world. Going to the moon and on to Mars is going to be an international program, but we need to be the guy out front. 'If the presidential candidates don't know that, then it's going to be a long hard summer.'..."