enthalpy

Thursday, August 04, 2011


Interesting piece on the end of the Shuttle program, and what got us there.
The problem was that we won to early. By the time of Apollo the Russians understood that they couldn’t win, and they gave up on the race, and told the world it wasn’t worth winning anyway. The grapes were sour. (For those with a modern education, that image is from a story in Aesop’s Fables, and if you never read those as a child, you ought to; you’ve missed something.) So by the time we landed on the Moon, it wasn’t so clear why we were doing it, or what we would get out of it; but it was clear that America was Number One, and our ability to go to space, do things, and come home was the demonstration of that. It wasn’t precisely The Dream, but it would do.
As with any government operation, there are always back-room deals, or it doesn't work. I don't know how much of the Kennedy stuff is true, but from a sheer "jobs program" or "wow, that was cool" aspect, America got its money out of NASA in the last 50 years.



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