[FPSPACE] Apollo in perspective

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi - 

 

It seems to me that many here are trying to live in the early 60's, when Mars was thought to be like the Earth, the US was out to be the Russians in space by itself, and no one knew what killed the dinosaurs. But i'm not here to tell you what you want to hear.

 

So instead of waxing nostaligic about where I was when Armstrong and Aldrin stepped on the Moon, I want to bring up the reasons why Saturn 5 was shut down:

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Apollo11MoonLanding/story?id=8090280&page=1

 

Add in to that the fact that Kennedy wanted to end that race and move to cooperation, and started in that direction immediately before his assassination.

 

As someone here observed, the N 1 landed 12 men on the Moon. Eisenhower started Saturn and Apollo in response  to the N 1. He also decided on a civilian agency. 

 

As far as both Kennedy and LBJ goes, Trevor Gardner had made the "missile gap" a key issue for the Democratric Party.

 

In my opinion, the key lesson of Apollo is that no one nation can afford space by itself. 

 

And not only do I disagree with Zubrin's engineering and cost estimates, more fundamentally, no matter how "low" the cost of manned Mars missions, no one wants to pay that cost, that's with or without other nations. 

 

On the other hand, as far as building impact defense systems go, no one living on planet Earth has any choice.

 

The space paradigm is shifting.

E.P.

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