Okay...dive in on thise one...let's rumble.

[DuaneBidoux]

Just heard my Tivo’d Colbert from yesterday. I was a little disappointed to hear “one giant leap for mankind followed by four decades of standing around and saying ‘now what’?”
Whose failure is it that Hubble and the International Space Station (as much a political statement as anything else) has not burned itself into the public consciousness? The discoveries of Hubble have in and of themselves moved us along as much as Einstein and in 40 years? Is it Nasa’s failure? (And I don’t say it’s not a failure). I just then wonder.

I Am biased as I have many friends and families in the heart of Nasa. But there are people IN Nasa who wonder things such as the question I Have above posested. I have felt that the space program for 50 years have led us to a path that is exciting (yes, sometimes scary), always complicated but, ultimately was responsible for four years of success in the private sector.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Mostly it's the "fault" of the American people.

As for NASA, well, the shuttle program's probably set us back more than anything.

[RandomThoughts]

2. Need a mag rail lift system. n/t

[EmeraldCityGrl]

3. We forget the Colbert is a comedy show

not the "real" news and subject to credability. Hard to tell the difference anymore.

[DuaneBidoux]

5. True. But let's face it. There is something true AND funny there.

I don't think he made up his joke from delusion land. In fact, it is something strong in the popular culture. (Hey, conservatives do not (in spite of what liberals think) get upset because they are bigots). They get upset because their worldview is threatened by reality.

[imdjh]

4. I've joked about this, but I really think Sci-fi is an issue.

The bottom line is that we have seen the future and what we have now sucks wind compared to Star Trek. It doesn't matter if it's rational or realistic, it's an emotional response, a national "Big deal." We don't expect transporters, because transporters technology is silly. But we do expect particle weapons and interplanetary flight that isn't a big deal and doesn't take forever.

[DuaneBidoux]

6. I've thought about that too. Repeatedly after each great s/f film I adore.

There is a definite tension there. As rational as I am I am still thrilled by a good fantasitical sci-fi film. And there is back to the reason of understanding the underwhelming discovervies of a Hubble that sees the first black star.

[StClone]

7. You know what this is?

The pigs canceled it in '93 and it would have taken a direction hand-in-hand with NASA's.

Science? Let's not go there but ridicule the quaint U-R-Pee'ns when they do.

If you don't know -- answer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider

Could it be restarted?

[gleaner]

8. I think it is ....

largely due to the conservative direction the U.S. has taken over the last several decades. The conservatives do not like spending money unless it is on something that profits them immediately. I remember Reagan's emphasis on how much the space shuttle could do to "help business," not on the potential for exploration or the eventual construction of a space station which was once intended.

If you look at Astronomy magazines you can find beautiful realizations of the Hubble pictures and other information of events in the Universe, but it is not given much publicity anywhere else. Again, I think this has been due to the growing conservatism of the news media which used to be our window to the Space Program. Are you old enough to remember sitting in front of the T.V and watching the astronauts show what they were doing? I am, and I was always fascinated. I remember in school they took us all into the auditorium and let us watch the television there during one event. I remember the moon landing and how exited I was. I actually thought that people might visit Mars in my lifetime. Now I know that is not going to happen.

NASA has not been well funded for years and years. I think they do the best they can with the funds they have. I have read that some of the shuttles that Bush sent up, went with cracks and other mechanical issues which could have killed the crews if the defects had caused the shuttles to fail. Bush didn't care. He was making a big show of a viable space program without shipping NASA any funds to support it. His agenda was strictly earthbound and war driven.

I wonder, what happens to a nation when it loses sight of the value of exploring to learn more, to increase knowledge or try to answer all of the dazzling questions that the Universe poses? Have we become so degraded that we have lost our sense of wonder or the thrill of learning something that we never knew before? The Space Program yielded many technological advances that enhanced life on earth too. Maybe not immediately, but steadily. When was the last time you came home exhausted and popped a quick dinner into the microwave? The Space Program provided the technology to make that possible. That and many other things I can't think of at the moment.

The failure, if that is how we want to attribute it, and I do, is with politicians who can't see beyond the end of their noses and who are not interested in anything beyond spreading money among the rich, destroying the middle class, and making war on the rest of the world. War which includes the poor people in their own country.

[MannyGoldstein]

9. We're Not Doing Anything That Seems Impossible

I have a good friend who was one of the first engineers at NASA - before they even named the first astronauts. When Kennedy announced we were going to the moon by the end of the decade, neither he nor anyone else at NASA thought it was actually possible - they thought it was political nonsense. There was no way that something that difficult could be done so quickly.

Sonofabitch!, eight years later Armstrong was traipsing around the moon. Each mission that led up to Armstrong's stroll tested some obvious new boundry - longer duration, space walking, rendevouz, lunar orbit, etc. There was always a large and obvious hurdle to overcome, a challenge to beat.

Now it all seems routine, even though it's not.

[Son Of Wendigo]

10. Thirty years of unimaginative conservative rule...

have brought the NASA's space program from the place where it inspired the entire country -- during the Vietnam War, I might add -- to where it is now. In the late 50's and early sixties, I remember getting up early and watching the Mercury and Gemini launches. They were magnificent but dangerous. I also remember the weekend that Grissom, Chaffee, and White were incinerated in Apollo 1 during a routine ground test. A little over two years later, Armstrong and Aldrin were on the moon. Where I lived, the famous first step took place an hour or so after dark. We had neighbors over to watch with us. It was a big event.

Nixon sent 7 Apollos to the moon. One didn't quite make it. He canceled the last two. That was it for the manned space program until the first shuttle flight a few years later. The shuttle is nothing more than a big flying truck, and it was never meant to be anything else. It carries things. like parts for the International Space Station, and satellites too big to launch any other way into low Earth orbit. There has never been much science done on the Shuttle. The main purpose of the Space Station simply seems to be keeping it in orbit. A lot of what is done on it is meant for business applications anyway. I can't recall any serious science being done on the Space Station either.

But running a fleet of aging, increasingly decrepit shuttles costs most of NASA's budget. There is some left over, less each year, which pays for the Hubble Telescope -- itself expected to become non-operational in a few years - and a handful of other satellites that actually are doing science. This does not get publicized at all. We have a satellite orbiting Saturn that has sent back astonishing photos and scientific data. It even sent a lander down to Saturn's moon Titan which sent back photos and data showing methane oceans and continents made of water ice. Does anyone know the name of this satellite? There is an infrared telescope which was recently launched that should show the black hole at the center of our galaxy. We know it's there and how massive it is. Now we should see it, or more accurately its event horizon. Does anyone care? There is another satellite on its way out to Pluto, where it will arrive in a few years, giving us a good idea about this dwarf planet and the many others that orbit along with Pluto in the Kuiper belt, out beyond Neptune, the last true planet. Objects like Sedna, and Quaoar, and Eris, about which we know very little, despite the fact they are big, perhaps the size of our moon. There is plenty to wonder at, just here locally, but the press and population as a whole is unaware of any of it.

I blame the "Reagan revolution" and its aftermath which has in this area as in so many others seriously damaged if not destroyed America's capacity to hope, and to wonder.