I am another pretty passionate about this topic.


Lil ol NASA is way way down there on where our money gets spent. Entitlements
is what you should be upset about.
This chart shows how small NASA spending is...........

http://www.federalbudget.com/chart.gif

We should not have stopped going to the moon. And never should have abandoned
the Saturn V.

But hindsight is twenty twenty. And I will say we have not wasted ourselves by
any stretch on those space endevours since Apollo.

We are now at a time when shuttles is nearing its end.
But it has done things only the shuttle could have done.
We may very well live in an age where there will never again NOT be a human
presence in space. Remarkable.

Shuttle taught us things we simply cannot learn any other way.
We learn by doing. WE learn from our mistakes as well. I wont defend shuttles
costs or failures to fulfill all its ambitious goals.

The ISS teaches us much as well because we are excercising those muscles in
the real world. Nothing replaces actually doing something. We all know that as
pilots.

But we move on.

Astronauts bring back the visions of space, they bring back what its like to
see our earth as an outsider. They bring back what its like to be a child of
earth. To see our world as it truly is, an oasis in a vast black expanse.


They take human presence beyond our world.
They teach us that the sky is not the limit, that there ARE no limits.


They keep an American/western world presence in space. If we dont. Someone
else will certainly take the lead. China is seeking the high ground now.


There are reasons why this nation is where it is today.
Reasons why any of us are here at all. Brave people took the risks and went
beyond the horizon. They did so on ships they knew may not return and on
imperfect wings.

"A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are built for."
-John A. Shedd


The oceans are littered with vessels of discovery.


Astronaut Story Musgrave.....


"We have been a frontier culture. We were born out of exploration, we were
born out of adventure. We were born out of the plains and the mountains. We've
been a very physical kind of culture. And so, if you look at adventure, if you
look at exploration, if you look at immersion in nature, a physical culture,
and all those things, you can see directly how space flight relates to the way
America has been born and how it evolved."


"You have to keep pushing the frontier not
just because it's there, but because that's how we find things that end up
changing humanity," -Paul Hill, Mission Control



Why Space, Why Explore?
Astronaut Story Musgrave...........


We have no choice, Sir. It is the Nature of Humanity, it is the Nature of Life


The Globe was created and Life Evolved, and you look at every single cubic
millimeter on this Earth, You can go 30,000 feet down below the Earth surface,
You can go 40,000 feet up in the air and Life is There. When you look at the
globe down there, you see Teeming Life Everywhere


It is the Power of Life, And maybe I am not just a Human up here, you know.
Now Life is Leaping off the Planet. It is heading to other parts of the Solar
System, other parts of the Universe


There are those kinds of Pressures. It isn't simply politics, it is not simply
technology, it is really not just the essence of humanity, but it is sort of
also, you could look at it as maybe the Essence of Life. I think Teilhard de
Chardin, in Phenomenon of Man, I believe he put that incredibly well. So those
kind of Forces are at Work. It is the nature of humans to be exploratory and
to Push On


Yes, it costs resources and it does cost a lot, and there is a risk, there is
a penalty, there is a down side, but Exploration and Pioneering, I think those
are the critical things, it is the Essence of what Human Beings are, and that
is to try to understand their Universe and to try to participate in the entire
Universe and not just their little Neighborhood -Story Musgrave





One of my most convincing arguments for space exploration is the analogy that
Earth itself is a spacecraft. Everything we learn about how to function and
live in space applies directly to our spacehip
Earth. How to recycle air, water, how to generate and use power efficiently,
how to grow food in closed ecosystems. All of it is important. All of this can
benefit mankind in a world with a fast growing population. Understanding other
worlds is how we understand OUR world better, to understand how it formed and
where it is going. Its our only home for now.



"We must not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will
be to arrive where we began, and to know it for the first time."
T.S. Eliot


Gallup survey.....


"More than three-fourths (77%) of the American public say they support a
newplan for space exploration that would include a stepping-stone approach to
returnthe space shuttle to flight, complete assembly of the space station,
build areplacement for the shuttle, go back to the Moon and then on to Mars
and beyond"




Q: Why should America send astronauts to Mars?


NASA Administrator Mike Griffin ........


A: I can give you a bunch of different answers that matter to me. But why did
Spain bankroll Magellan to leave port with five ships and head out around the
world, two of which never made it past the Canary Islands and two more of
which were lost on the way? They got one ship back three years later with
something like 20 or so people out of an initial crew of 122 across all the
ships. Why'd they do that? It is in the nature of humans to find, to define,
to explore and to push back the frontier. And in our time, the frontier is
space and will be for a very long time.


Give me a counter example to the statement I'm about to make. When the history
books are written, the nations that are preeminent in their time are those
nations that dominate the frontiers of their time. The failed societies are
the ones that pull back from the frontier. I want our society, America,
western society, to be preeminent in the world of the future and I want us not
to be a failed society. And the way to do that, universally so, is to push the
frontier.


Now we don't do that with every dollar we've got. Obviously, most of our money
has to be spent on today's concerns. But we're talking about something here
that uses six tenths of a percent of the federal budget. This is not exactly
spending money like a drunken sailor. This is an investment for our
grandchildren's grandchildren.


I could make a very good argument on the basis of economics, that the European
investment in the New World didn't pay off, really, for Europeans for 400
years. I could make an argument for you that the biggest payoff of European
investment in the New World was the existence of America to bail them out of
World War 2. Europe would have sunk into a dark age in the 20th century with
the set of political activities and behaviors that led to World War 1 and then
World War 2, which followed from that. Without the investment in the New
World, there would not have been another society elsewhere on the planet to
prevent Europe from falling back into a second dark age. And I could make an
argument that European investment in the New World was a net loss for hundreds
of years and finally was worth the effort.


These kinds of activities, as I say, they're not large in the grand scheme of
things, although it looks large when you write down the budget numbers, and
they don't pay off today. They pay off for our grandchildren's grandchildren.
And I care about that and I think everyone else should, too. -NASA
Administrator Mike Griffin



A note was found from the Challenger commander in his breifcase after the
accident...
Excerpted from Silver Linings : Triumph of the Challenger 7. by June Scobee
Rodgers and June Scobee Rogers.

"We have whole planets to explore, we have new worlds to build. We have a
solar system to roam in. And if only a tiny fraction of the human race reaches
out toward space, the work they do there will totally change the lives of all
the billions of humans who remain on earth, just as the strivings of a handful
of colonists in the new world totally changed the lives of everyone in Europe,
Asia & Africa."
p

Had Dick left the note in his briefcase for us to find if something happened?
Did he write it on scratch paper to use to quote in a speech? All we'll ever
know is that when we most needed a message, it was there. He left for us his
dream for the world, his vision for space exploration."



Please consider the above. It is about so much more then you think.
Humanity is just getting started. Mere baby steps so far.

The civilizations that lead on the frontier, end up dictating the course of
human history.



And that work continues. New designs are being worked on and tests are
beginning now.
This... is what is next for NASA.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vZ8RIcmWAk


Lunar helium 3 may end up powering fusion reactors on earth someday.
You never know what is going to matter and change the world.

We learned of lunar helium 3 because of our exploration efforts there.

We must push forward, challenge and improve and yes sometimes manage risk.
Always.

As pilots we all know what that means personally. And we all know what it
means when we do not do these efforts.
It is no different as a nation or a species.

Moon, Mars and beyond are no different from the frontiers of the past that
called and challenged us and formed who we are today. It is simply hard coded
in our being to do these things.