Sad Thought of the Day

I haven’t been able to shake being really, truly sad about the death of our space program here in the US in recent weeks. Sure, NASA still exists, but it’s clearly a shell of what it once was, and to think in the ’60s that we’d be going backwards in terms of space travel rather than bounding forward into the unknown is just so tragic.

Looking at Washington and seeing how things like war and nonsensical political battles are our top priorities, I have to wonder when, if ever, are we going to get back on track and start being explorers again. I almost feel like the US is out of the game and it’s going to be up to some other country who doesn’t have their priorities screwed up to pick up where we left off.

Or maybe we’ll all get lucky and aliens will just show up and save us the time and money.

Image drawn by this guy.

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9 Comments

  1. It really is sad. I mean, America used to be the land of Manifest Destiny, where most of the land was hostile and unexplored, yet Americans pushed the boundaries all the way through to the Pacific Ocean. The space race was a continuation of that. Our country has always been about expanding, and unlike our predecessors, we didn’t do it imperialistically. It is a sad day when our greed and political agendas get in the way of two hundred years of American exploration. We need to focus our Manifest Destiny on the stars and space, because that is the next extension of the real dream that shaped our entire country and belief system. Americans are so different from the rest of the world mainly due to Manifest Destiny and shaping our own futures. We are fifty times the size of most other countries, which means we have a larger focus with big dreams and the ingenuity to see those dreams through. All we need to do is reach back two hundred years and remember what we’re all about.

    Also, during Manifest Destiny, we weren’t focused on policing the world or interfering with other cultures and people. Instead, we focused on doing everything in our lives as well and on as big of a scale as possible. Somewhere along the line Americans became indifferent, and now our politicians have settled us into a rut of complacency while making us believe our real destiny is in forcing the rest of the world to behave how we believe they should. Let’s go back to the way things used to be; let’s care more about our own improvement instead of total conformity to false ideals that we have only stood for in greedy politicians’ minds.

  2. Don’t mourn the loss of manned space flight at Nasa. It was a phenomenal waste of money and resources. The Space Shuttle program was a colossal failure. There is nothing a man can do in space that a probe or a robot can’t do for a tiny fraction of the cost. Humanity’s knowledge of and reach into space would be so much more than it is now if manned flight had been abandoned decades ago (when it should have been).

  3. while you’ve got a point frikkenkids, there goal of space exploration is to get humans out there. Probes and robots are all well and good, but they’re only useful for data retrieval. Someone back home still has to control them or at the very least keep an eye on them.

    That said I agree that the Shuttle program was a huge waste of money, but not for the reasons you specify. Instead I believe it’s because we lost focus. NASA along with all the other countries participating have spent the past few decades faffing about in the ISS, doing repairs and such instead of trying to actually accomplish something meaningful.

    The goal is Mars, simple as that. They don’t even need to aim for a landing, just getting a human out that far would be an huge first step.

  4. What would you do with a single person on Mars? How would that benefit the rest of the human race?

    If we could get functioning colonies on either Mars or the moon, that would certainly be something. But space is so volatile for humans, it won’t be happening without some sort of massive advancements in technology and science.

    “Let’s go back to the way things used to be;let’s care more about our own improvement instead of total conformity to false ideals that we have only stood for in greedy politicians’ minds.”

    A return to normalcy, eh? The bullshit of politics has existed since the days of Plato, it certainly hasn’t gone away, and it probably isn’t going away.
    Instead of looking for some “golden age” of society, we should accept that humanity is always gunna be fucked. Our solution to should be to make things a little less screwy, one step at a time.

    Also, Manifest Destiny still achieved the same result as an imperial takeover; the removal of the original inhabitants.
    Just saying. Doesn’t matter who does the ass kicking, as it’s still an ass kicking.

  5. That is not what this poster is about. at all. It has nothing to do with the actual space travel, or any golden ages. Its about thinking how far we could go if we were just nice people.

  6. Space exploration is a myth, humans will never get to the stars because we’ll become extinct before we even get close to having the know how and technology.

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