Buzz Aldrin ~ In Search of a Real Spaceship

In Search of a Real Spaceship...by Buzz Aldrin

Imagine this scenario: you are a tourist coming home from a special vacation jaunt. Or maybe you're a researcher headed home from an assignment at a national laboratory. But instead of a nice gentle landing at an airport, you plunge into the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean, bobbing about like a cork on a fishing line. Instead of a leisurely stroll to the airport concourse, you have to wait to be fished out of the drink by the U.S. navy. Sound enticing? That's just the way future Americans will have to return from space visits to the International Space Station www.huffingtonpost.com...

In this essay about the dumping of the shuttle in favour of an Apollo/Gemini-styled capsule, Aldrin laments the U.S. taking a giant step backwards to develop the Orion capsule as the preferred method of space travel and re-entry. Makes you wonder when governments lost the will to excel...and to"boldly go."

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck


It is an unfortunate reality of life that our government is very often so shortsighted when it comes to scientific endeavor. I tend to agree with the assessment... Orion is a step backwards. What's more troubling is that even this is now being so underfunded that the final product may be closer to the Model T than even an Edsel.

It's a bean-counter's world where a dollar value is assigned to everything including, sadly, human life. It is also a time-tested means of greatly underachieving at mediocrity; a tepid pond of imagination where should rage an ocean of effort.

S&F! Good work, thanks!

Edit: I hate typos!

[edit on 26-11-2009 by redoubt]

Buzz might want to check out the Area 51 vehicles. All that black operations development money over the years went into something. And I don't believe it was into lame rocket capsules.

are you supposed to plunge into the Atlantic in this?

...in April 2010, the U.S. Air Force is scheduled to launch an Atlas V booster from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the newest U.S. spacecraft, the unmanned X-37, to orbit

Space Shuttle Jr.

i don't see NASA as taking a step backward, they might be a bit too slow for my taste but hey, they're trying to step forward as much as they can.

[edit on 11.26.09 by toreishi]