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Neil
This is Ma' Life!
Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 697
Location: Glasgow
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 Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 3:30 pm Post subject: If They Could Put A Man On The Moon |
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| Quote: | ( China & Russia) had formalized their plans for the moon research in a specific action plan approved in June 2005 and followed up on that with several expert meetings. The latest meeting of Russian and Chinese space officials took place last week.
“Joint lunar research is our priority,” Anatoly Perminov said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency. He didn't elaborate on specific plans for the moon research, but said that new agreements on space cooperation could be signed during Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's visit to Beijing in the fall.
Perminov also said that China could join Russia's project of sending a probe to Mars' moon, Phobos, to take soil samples and deliver them back to Earth. The mission is set for 2009.
Russia sold China the technology that formed the basis of its manned space program, which launched its first astronaut in 2003 and two others in 2005. The next Chinese manned space flight is due next year. Officials say they also want to send up a space station and land a robot probe on the Moon by 2010.
As part of a U.S. effort to return to the moon, NASA plans the first test flight of its Orion spacecraft in 2014, with a manned mission by late 2019 or 2020.
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http://www.signonsandiego.com/new...0911-1144-russia-china-space.html Good for the Chinese & Russians if they can do it & shame to us that we no longer can.
Look at NASA's timescale for getting back to the Moon - 13 or 14 years.
On 12th September 1962 Kennedy said | Quote: | If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it - we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.
Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain. Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
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& in 8 years they had made it.
& in the 47 since we have gone backward.
The entire speech is worth readinghttp://www.rice.edu/fondren/woodson/speech.html. Politicians don't say things meant to inspire us anymore they just say things to frighten us about global warming & the need to depend on windmills.
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The aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken |
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Cado
I Love 'Our Scotland'
Joined: 14 May 2006
Posts: 283
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| Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 5:31 pm Post subject: |
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Neil - you should get this DVD:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/All-Manki...0258900-4092606?ie=UTF8&s=dvd
Best documentry Ive ever seen - its narrated by the original astronauts, with a oundtrack by Eno. Used to come back in from a night out and just loose myself in this.
Agreed on your main point though. There is only one way forward from where we are now, up, out and beyond. Right now we're tearing ourselves to bit each trying to dominate this tiny wee blue planet of ours. Out there, its limitless, there are no boundaries. The first to get a real foothold will be the ones probably to control many things long term.
I'm thinking a bit of the founding period of european empires. Europeans were just warring with each other trying to control continental europe. britian then just looked out over the horizon and ventured forth.
Yup, something of that magnitude would get us all absorbed, there are no limits - we'd just keep going. |
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