Phædrus
03-22-2008, 07:16 PM
http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs29/f/2008/076/d/a/Apollo_by_Phaedrus2401.jpg
Apollo, man in the sky. Humans have been looking at the stars for as long as we can remember. Who can blame us if we want to go to them? See them up close? But some people don't care about stars.
The Space Program
In 2007, the US spent $16.792 billion dollars on NASA, of which $6.2 billion was spent on Space Operations, $5.3 billion on the science program, and $3.9 billion on Exploration Systems. The entire US Congressional Discretionary Budget for that year was $983 billion, making NASA's total operating cost for that year 1.7% of the whole budget. That's an insignificant amount. Yet, people say that since the space program doesn't do anything useful, it's pork and should be cut from the budget. Nuts! The military soaked up $632 billion - 64%!
First off, had the space program never been started, we wouldn't have long distance cell phone calls. Cell phones work by bouncing your call from phone to phone until it reaches a tower, from which it is bounced to a cellular phone center, from which it is beamed to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, from which is beamed to another cellular phone center, where it's sent back down the line to the call receiver. A similar system exists for cable and satellite TV (satellite TV sends the signal to individual houses. Cable TV sends the signal to Cable centers from where it's sent through cables to your house). Hell, satellites even impact the internet; much of the internet's traffic is bounced through satellites. That all came from the space program. Not to mention lightweight wheel chairs, better insulation, better materials technology, better computing technology, all sorts of ****.
Resources
Space has almost everything you could dream of in it. The problem is going to get it.
Many people criticized the Apollo program, saying that all it ever did was bring back a few rocks; but did you know what those rocks were made of? Carbon, silicon, oxygen, iron, nickel, zirconium, and titanium, that's what. The Moon has every mineral resource we have on Earth except nitrogen compounds. Water can be made by melting moon rocks and running hydrogen through it. The hydrogen bonds with released oxygen and creates water. That water can then by hydrolyzed back into O2 and H2.
But that's peanuts. Look at the asteroid belt. Some one in six asteroids is a nickel-iron asteroid. One average sized metallic asteroid has as much metal as was mined all over the world in the past three years. All we have to do is get it, and we can have that technology within the next few decades. We'd have it now if the damn Proxmires hadn't cut NASA's funding to shreds.
It's raining soup out there, and we don't even know about soup bowls.
Apollo
Some people don't believe in space, though. Some people believe we never even went to the Moon, and make up complicated conspiracy theories to support the idea. Why is it so hard to believe that we launched a capsule with three men towards the moon and landed two on its surface; six times!
It's time to get out there, see the stars. Apollo--man in the sky! The new Ares program offers fresh hope for manned spaceflight, promising man on Mars by 2037; but will it deliver? Not if the people don't have faith in it, it won't.
It's time to get out there, and see what free men can do!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Apollo_11_launch.jpg/480px-Apollo_11_launch.jpg
Apollo, man in the sky. Humans have been looking at the stars for as long as we can remember. Who can blame us if we want to go to them? See them up close? But some people don't care about stars.
The Space Program
In 2007, the US spent $16.792 billion dollars on NASA, of which $6.2 billion was spent on Space Operations, $5.3 billion on the science program, and $3.9 billion on Exploration Systems. The entire US Congressional Discretionary Budget for that year was $983 billion, making NASA's total operating cost for that year 1.7% of the whole budget. That's an insignificant amount. Yet, people say that since the space program doesn't do anything useful, it's pork and should be cut from the budget. Nuts! The military soaked up $632 billion - 64%!
First off, had the space program never been started, we wouldn't have long distance cell phone calls. Cell phones work by bouncing your call from phone to phone until it reaches a tower, from which it is bounced to a cellular phone center, from which it is beamed to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, from which is beamed to another cellular phone center, where it's sent back down the line to the call receiver. A similar system exists for cable and satellite TV (satellite TV sends the signal to individual houses. Cable TV sends the signal to Cable centers from where it's sent through cables to your house). Hell, satellites even impact the internet; much of the internet's traffic is bounced through satellites. That all came from the space program. Not to mention lightweight wheel chairs, better insulation, better materials technology, better computing technology, all sorts of ****.
Resources
Space has almost everything you could dream of in it. The problem is going to get it.
Many people criticized the Apollo program, saying that all it ever did was bring back a few rocks; but did you know what those rocks were made of? Carbon, silicon, oxygen, iron, nickel, zirconium, and titanium, that's what. The Moon has every mineral resource we have on Earth except nitrogen compounds. Water can be made by melting moon rocks and running hydrogen through it. The hydrogen bonds with released oxygen and creates water. That water can then by hydrolyzed back into O2 and H2.
But that's peanuts. Look at the asteroid belt. Some one in six asteroids is a nickel-iron asteroid. One average sized metallic asteroid has as much metal as was mined all over the world in the past three years. All we have to do is get it, and we can have that technology within the next few decades. We'd have it now if the damn Proxmires hadn't cut NASA's funding to shreds.
It's raining soup out there, and we don't even know about soup bowls.
Apollo
Some people don't believe in space, though. Some people believe we never even went to the Moon, and make up complicated conspiracy theories to support the idea. Why is it so hard to believe that we launched a capsule with three men towards the moon and landed two on its surface; six times!
It's time to get out there, see the stars. Apollo--man in the sky! The new Ares program offers fresh hope for manned spaceflight, promising man on Mars by 2037; but will it deliver? Not if the people don't have faith in it, it won't.
It's time to get out there, and see what free men can do!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Apollo_11_launch.jpg/480px-Apollo_11_launch.jpg