I agree with some of what you say, but I think you are astray of the history a bit.
LBJ was JFK's "go-to" man on the space program. JFK gets the credit, but LBJ was the guy behind the scenes making it happen. To the benefit of Texas, of course (Johnson Space Flight Center). And of other states having major NASA facilities. Hard to predict what Kennedy would have done in the future. The Moon landing took place when Kennedy would no longer have been in office, even if he had a 2nd term. There's no reason to think things would have been otherwise than they were: the public support was not there, the Vietnam War was ramping up, and budgets were tight.
The government didn't fund the space program very well, and "lacks the will" to promote off-world manned exploration of the Moon? Says who? Not the majority of Americans, or they would have made their preferences known to Congress. But they didn't. At the end of the Apollo program, about 1972, NASA made a transition from a mission-driven organization to a self-perpetuating organization. As part of that, they kicked von Braun upstairs (perhaps the most visionary man in favor of exploration) and fired his team from Peenemunde. The Shuttle program and the ISS can easily be viewed as extravagant technical exercises to keep NASA "rice bowls" full and its employees engaged, while spreading the largess around the nation. Why would a bureaucracy go back to a mission-driven posture, when that carries the risk of failure? We can thank Trump for kicking them off their stools, and Musk for providing external competition.
There was never any competition between spy satellites (inaugurated by Eisenhower) and the NASA programs. Bush didn't do anything special. He continued a successful observation program that had been in existence since the late 1950s.
I don't know what you mean about "outright public deception." If you are talking about "climate change" propaganda, I can agree with you. Otherwise, you are barking up the wrong tree.
Nobody was standing in Musk's way to any significant degree when it came to him redeveloping all the technology necessary to revisit the Moon. You are not grasping the importance of MONEY and how people calculate a return on investment. Musk is a visionary. Anyone else who has as much money is fixated either on money per se, or on other obsessions. And, again, there was no popularly-expressed urgency to go to the Moon. In matters where the Legislature sets budgets, the democratic process rules. Moon exploration didn't have the votes. And NASA getting budget for the Artemis program is still a chancy deal.
The only "modern narratives" that contend space exploration is "impossible" come from ignorant conspiracy theorists. The "popular science" is quite opposite. The other position that space exploration is "too expensive" is a matter of judgment on priorities, and it is a legitimate position, depending on your point of view. I happen to think that NASA will ultimately bungle the Artemis project, and would have been happier with Musk bankrolling and guiding the entire effort---but that's not in the cards just yet. I would not be surprised if Musk would be the Man On the White Horse if Artemis fails, offering to do it his way.
As for precious-metal asteroids, don't count your chickens before they hatch.
The Moon Hoax delusion may come from the direction you mention, and/or also an obsession with radical skepticism ("Question Everything"), which we (us, this page) tends to feed into. Either way, it leads into paranoid psychosis.
But thanks for the conversation. Much more pleasant than ideological bashing. I hope you can see that the reasons for where we are owe much to simple lack of public support. Within reason, now that we are 30 trillion $ in debt. When the family bank account goes dry, trips to the seashore must be suspended for a while.
Yes, thanks for the pleasant chat. I will just comment on one more thing.
LBJ was JFK's "go-to" man on the space program. JFK gets the credit, but LBJ was the guy behind the scenes making it happen. To the benefit of Texas, of course (Johnson Space Flight Center).
LBJ and Kennedy hated each other, and LBJ was deeply involved with the assassination of JFK. LBJ is as far deep state, democrat swamp as anyone.
LBJ was the swamp enforcer whom the establishment forced Kennedy to take as his VP. LBJ was one of most loathsome, murderous snakes ever to be born on American soil. Jackie Kennedy even wrote a book accusing LBJ of the murder- ever heard about that book?
Money being diverted to the Vietnam war, instead of space exploration- again, that was all LBJ.
Anyways, while we may disagree, your point about LBJ and his relation to the space program only reinforces my position- the establishment doesn't really want the little peons leaving their planet.
The idea of space exploration has not been promoted in the halls of power, it has been shunned by the establishment, and propagandized under the same propaganda umbrella that asserts- "America was never great; landing on the moon was, and is impossible you stupid little peasant, just forget about it."
I think we are getting down to history and what it shows us. I never liked LBJ, and I was quite surprised upon reading a detailed history of the Apollo program showing that he had been a spaceflight advocate during his time as a Senator. He had taken a lead in advocacy that JFK later adopted as part of his campaign and subsequent administration. What you say about the evils of LBJ are possibly true---but it doesn't erase the fact that LBJ was an Apollo program supporter. The program was not canceled when he was president.
Money "diverted" where and when? LBJ made sure NASA was fully funded through his presidency. Nixon was the one who canceled the final 3 planned Moon landings---in order to free up funds for Skylab and the development of the Space Shuttle. So, money was not "diverted" from space exploration, just reallocated among space exploration projects. (The federal budgeting process is a fight over every dollar, and the formation of a particular budget is not "diversion." The only untouchable allocations are the mandatory ones, like Social Security, etc.)
Nixon was president after LBJ, 1969 to 1974. All lunar landings were made during his presidency. The financial support for the program slumped after the first landing---which was the driving pressure behind the Space Race. We won the race, and there were other priorities for the federal budget. You don't seem to understand, or want to understand, that (1) the nation had no Constitutional duty to go to the Moon, (2) the public interest had waned, and (3) other issues had higher financial priority. There was absolutely no popular interest in leaving the planet (and there still isn't). The Apollo project itself, for all it did, cost $20.2 billion in then-year dollars, or about $176 billion in 2022 dollars. Somehow, I think a GoFundMe campaign would have a hard time scraping up that kind of money...and I don't agree that the government should be spending taxes on space exploration (other than necessary to support military operations). The "establishment" simply doesn't care; they have other fish to fry. The problem is so challenging, there is no need to "prevent" anyone from doing anything. The difficulty of the problem is a sufficient barrier. If you think you have a cheap way of doing it, there is a whole industry that is ears open, but you seem to want the government to spend unlimited $100s of billions on such an effort. I've been a space enthusiast ever since I could read, but not at any cost.
Nobody has an obligation to promote space exploration. You want a voice like that in Congress? Run for office. Absolutely no one in the government is promoting the "space flight is impossible" nonsense. I have only seen that ridiculous ignorance and denialism on these pages. Meanwhile, the government tolerates Elon Musk's ambitions, plans, and activities with only minor regulation. You seem to be oblivious to the way in which he is pushing forward on the road into space, making massive breakthroughs in cost and capability. I should think you would be encouraged. I am encouraged. (I also think he is underestimating the challenge and costs of colonizing the Moon or Mars, but that is another matter. For example, building and maintaining the International Space Station for 25 years has taken $150 billion. Hard for me to think of that as "not supporting" space exploration.)
We may agree to disagree, but in my case, I have been in the industry for 40 years. I understand what happened and how we got where we are. There is no need to dream up an adversary that really doesn't exist, when the main obstacles are money and time.
The first airplane invented flew ~300 yards in 1903. 44 short years later, in 1947 the X-1 carried a person to break the sound barrier, while being dropped from an airplane capable of crossing oceans. In 1942, V2 rockets were hitting unmanned speeds of mach 4 using technology, and knowledge from that era. Then, 30 short years later the US ended the Apollo program after landing people on the moon numerous times.
So here we are, 50 years after that. A half century! 50!
I get what you are saying about cost, and funding, and difficulties, and all that, and, no offense to you, but I flatly reject those talking points as nothing more than establishment malarky that has been indoctrinated into our modern society.
It's not "too hard," or "too expensive," or "impossible; never happened." Musk, and other citizens are hard at work proving that too.
And, by the way, this narrative about "the moon landings are fake" is a rather old narrative that has been pushed insidiously through semi-mainstream outlets (pinko-commie propaganda rags) for decades. There is an agenda behind it.
In my opinion, what we have today as a space program is a space program that has been hijacked by the worst elements in out govt. and the military industrial complex- and that hijacking started in part with LBJ. It is only a fraction of what it could, and should be today.
It is an example of what political, and institutional rot, and corruption produces- a system that gorges itself on the wealth and knowledge of its citizens, while returning little to nothing back for the majority of those citizens.
So anyways, we both agree that this crap about the moon landings being fake is just that- crap.
If you want to believe that 50 years after the Apollo program ended that the progress with the modern space program is all perfectly fine, and normal, then that is your prerogative to believe that.
But personally, when I hear about NASA having to launch rockets from fucking Khazakhstan, while my lying, corrupt, pos govt. tries to tell me that it's all cool, and the 'new normal' i think that's a load of crap too. Something is very wrong, and this American ain't gonna accept any bullshit excuses from our govt. about space exploration being "too hard" or "too expensive." They are hiding, and withholding too much technology, and holding us [a free society] back. I'm quite certain that the longer we fall for the bullshit narratives, and excuses for why manned space exploration has stalled for the last half century, the worse it will be for us, our nation, and future generations.
Money means everything. In World War II, technology advanced tremendously (ballistic missiles, atomic weapons, radars, jet aircraft, guidance systems) because there was a huge dedication of national wealth, talent, and labor to its development. Same thing with the Apollo program. It didn't happen spontaneously and it didn't happen by accident.
I am trying to educate you to the historical reality of events. The basic point is that THE PUBLIC DIDN'T CARE, and that was reflected in subsequent budgets. The people who were in a position to influence those budgets were persuaded that further flights to the Moon were too extravagant and directed funding to the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS). I would remind you that Musk is (currently) the richest billionaire in the world. That's what it takes to embark on a pet project. Notice that no one is stopping him. If you have the money, you have the key to the door.
The space program has never been "hijacked." It has always been a creature of government preference---and going to the Moon was a Kennedy initiative of an activity that was sponsored from the beginning by Johnson, all of the pre-landing Apollo program in fact. I don't like Johnson for all the right reasons, but being "against" manned space exploration is not one of them. If it hadn't been for Kennedy-Johnson, we wouldn't have gone to the Moon.
I have worked in the space business for 40 years, so I rather think my view is far more informed by facts, history, and technical understanding than your desire to find plotters under the bed. There is no "normal" in the space program. It has always been a preference---subject to fads among the legislators. If you can't see that, take a hard look. Musk is succeeding because he does not much depend on government funds (though they are a customer).
NASA doesn't launch rockets from Kazakhstan; the Russians do. This is inescapable when we have to travel to the ISS on Soyuz vehicles (thanks to NASA's failure to develop a successor to the Space Shuttle). Now we can get there on SpaceX Dragon capsules. But is is a sheer fact that space travel is hard and expensive. There are too many space enthusiasts in this country for any "too hard" message to ever have made way---and if you think that is a prevalent message, I haven't seen it in my adult life, so you are dreaming it up. Way too much "truther" mythology out there, imagining dragons that don't exist, and not enough clear vision. There is no secret technology being withheld. All of it is out for view, and reflects technology being continuously developed.
The only bullshit in this discussion is what you seem bound and determined to believe, in defiance of the facts. Do you seriously think that the Space Shuttle was an obstacle to space exploration? It was a good objective, but was compromised by budgetary constraints and wishful thinking generally. Yet it did put into orbit tremendous tools of astronomy. Do you seriously think that the probes to Mars were an obstacle to space exploration? They have surveyed where we would go and what we would find there. Do you seriously think that the ISS was an obstacle to space exploration? How else were we to understand the long-term effects of space flight? I am not otherwise impressed by the "science" that it purportedly accomplished, but it did at least give us a medical database, and space medicine is crucial to space exploration. I have no idea what you think "space exploration" would be, since you seem to have no conception of what goes into all this, how much it will cost, and no regard for the risks involved.
I'm not the one with a mistaken view. I've been watching all this since Sputnik first flew in 1957. I've been working in the field from the early 70s to the mid 10s. I've worked with former astronauts. I defer to no one in my criticism of NASA, but you are not close to the truth at all. Learn more and emote less.
I agree with some of what you say, but I think you are astray of the history a bit.
LBJ was JFK's "go-to" man on the space program. JFK gets the credit, but LBJ was the guy behind the scenes making it happen. To the benefit of Texas, of course (Johnson Space Flight Center). And of other states having major NASA facilities. Hard to predict what Kennedy would have done in the future. The Moon landing took place when Kennedy would no longer have been in office, even if he had a 2nd term. There's no reason to think things would have been otherwise than they were: the public support was not there, the Vietnam War was ramping up, and budgets were tight.
The government didn't fund the space program very well, and "lacks the will" to promote off-world manned exploration of the Moon? Says who? Not the majority of Americans, or they would have made their preferences known to Congress. But they didn't. At the end of the Apollo program, about 1972, NASA made a transition from a mission-driven organization to a self-perpetuating organization. As part of that, they kicked von Braun upstairs (perhaps the most visionary man in favor of exploration) and fired his team from Peenemunde. The Shuttle program and the ISS can easily be viewed as extravagant technical exercises to keep NASA "rice bowls" full and its employees engaged, while spreading the largess around the nation. Why would a bureaucracy go back to a mission-driven posture, when that carries the risk of failure? We can thank Trump for kicking them off their stools, and Musk for providing external competition.
There was never any competition between spy satellites (inaugurated by Eisenhower) and the NASA programs. Bush didn't do anything special. He continued a successful observation program that had been in existence since the late 1950s.
I don't know what you mean about "outright public deception." If you are talking about "climate change" propaganda, I can agree with you. Otherwise, you are barking up the wrong tree.
Nobody was standing in Musk's way to any significant degree when it came to him redeveloping all the technology necessary to revisit the Moon. You are not grasping the importance of MONEY and how people calculate a return on investment. Musk is a visionary. Anyone else who has as much money is fixated either on money per se, or on other obsessions. And, again, there was no popularly-expressed urgency to go to the Moon. In matters where the Legislature sets budgets, the democratic process rules. Moon exploration didn't have the votes. And NASA getting budget for the Artemis program is still a chancy deal.
The only "modern narratives" that contend space exploration is "impossible" come from ignorant conspiracy theorists. The "popular science" is quite opposite. The other position that space exploration is "too expensive" is a matter of judgment on priorities, and it is a legitimate position, depending on your point of view. I happen to think that NASA will ultimately bungle the Artemis project, and would have been happier with Musk bankrolling and guiding the entire effort---but that's not in the cards just yet. I would not be surprised if Musk would be the Man On the White Horse if Artemis fails, offering to do it his way.
As for precious-metal asteroids, don't count your chickens before they hatch.
The Moon Hoax delusion may come from the direction you mention, and/or also an obsession with radical skepticism ("Question Everything"), which we (us, this page) tends to feed into. Either way, it leads into paranoid psychosis.
But thanks for the conversation. Much more pleasant than ideological bashing. I hope you can see that the reasons for where we are owe much to simple lack of public support. Within reason, now that we are 30 trillion $ in debt. When the family bank account goes dry, trips to the seashore must be suspended for a while.
Yes, thanks for the pleasant chat. I will just comment on one more thing.
LBJ and Kennedy hated each other, and LBJ was deeply involved with the assassination of JFK. LBJ is as far deep state, democrat swamp as anyone.
LBJ was the swamp enforcer whom the establishment forced Kennedy to take as his VP. LBJ was one of most loathsome, murderous snakes ever to be born on American soil. Jackie Kennedy even wrote a book accusing LBJ of the murder- ever heard about that book?
Money being diverted to the Vietnam war, instead of space exploration- again, that was all LBJ.
Anyways, while we may disagree, your point about LBJ and his relation to the space program only reinforces my position- the establishment doesn't really want the little peons leaving their planet.
The idea of space exploration has not been promoted in the halls of power, it has been shunned by the establishment, and propagandized under the same propaganda umbrella that asserts- "America was never great; landing on the moon was, and is impossible you stupid little peasant, just forget about it."
I think we are getting down to history and what it shows us. I never liked LBJ, and I was quite surprised upon reading a detailed history of the Apollo program showing that he had been a spaceflight advocate during his time as a Senator. He had taken a lead in advocacy that JFK later adopted as part of his campaign and subsequent administration. What you say about the evils of LBJ are possibly true---but it doesn't erase the fact that LBJ was an Apollo program supporter. The program was not canceled when he was president.
Money "diverted" where and when? LBJ made sure NASA was fully funded through his presidency. Nixon was the one who canceled the final 3 planned Moon landings---in order to free up funds for Skylab and the development of the Space Shuttle. So, money was not "diverted" from space exploration, just reallocated among space exploration projects. (The federal budgeting process is a fight over every dollar, and the formation of a particular budget is not "diversion." The only untouchable allocations are the mandatory ones, like Social Security, etc.)
Nixon was president after LBJ, 1969 to 1974. All lunar landings were made during his presidency. The financial support for the program slumped after the first landing---which was the driving pressure behind the Space Race. We won the race, and there were other priorities for the federal budget. You don't seem to understand, or want to understand, that (1) the nation had no Constitutional duty to go to the Moon, (2) the public interest had waned, and (3) other issues had higher financial priority. There was absolutely no popular interest in leaving the planet (and there still isn't). The Apollo project itself, for all it did, cost $20.2 billion in then-year dollars, or about $176 billion in 2022 dollars. Somehow, I think a GoFundMe campaign would have a hard time scraping up that kind of money...and I don't agree that the government should be spending taxes on space exploration (other than necessary to support military operations). The "establishment" simply doesn't care; they have other fish to fry. The problem is so challenging, there is no need to "prevent" anyone from doing anything. The difficulty of the problem is a sufficient barrier. If you think you have a cheap way of doing it, there is a whole industry that is ears open, but you seem to want the government to spend unlimited $100s of billions on such an effort. I've been a space enthusiast ever since I could read, but not at any cost.
Nobody has an obligation to promote space exploration. You want a voice like that in Congress? Run for office. Absolutely no one in the government is promoting the "space flight is impossible" nonsense. I have only seen that ridiculous ignorance and denialism on these pages. Meanwhile, the government tolerates Elon Musk's ambitions, plans, and activities with only minor regulation. You seem to be oblivious to the way in which he is pushing forward on the road into space, making massive breakthroughs in cost and capability. I should think you would be encouraged. I am encouraged. (I also think he is underestimating the challenge and costs of colonizing the Moon or Mars, but that is another matter. For example, building and maintaining the International Space Station for 25 years has taken $150 billion. Hard for me to think of that as "not supporting" space exploration.)
We may agree to disagree, but in my case, I have been in the industry for 40 years. I understand what happened and how we got where we are. There is no need to dream up an adversary that really doesn't exist, when the main obstacles are money and time.
The first airplane invented flew ~300 yards in 1903. 44 short years later, in 1947 the X-1 carried a person to break the sound barrier, while being dropped from an airplane capable of crossing oceans. In 1942, V2 rockets were hitting unmanned speeds of mach 4 using technology, and knowledge from that era. Then, 30 short years later the US ended the Apollo program after landing people on the moon numerous times.
So here we are, 50 years after that. A half century! 50!
I get what you are saying about cost, and funding, and difficulties, and all that, and, no offense to you, but I flatly reject those talking points as nothing more than establishment malarky that has been indoctrinated into our modern society.
It's not "too hard," or "too expensive," or "impossible; never happened." Musk, and other citizens are hard at work proving that too.
And, by the way, this narrative about "the moon landings are fake" is a rather old narrative that has been pushed insidiously through semi-mainstream outlets (pinko-commie propaganda rags) for decades. There is an agenda behind it.
In my opinion, what we have today as a space program is a space program that has been hijacked by the worst elements in out govt. and the military industrial complex- and that hijacking started in part with LBJ. It is only a fraction of what it could, and should be today.
It is an example of what political, and institutional rot, and corruption produces- a system that gorges itself on the wealth and knowledge of its citizens, while returning little to nothing back for the majority of those citizens.
So anyways, we both agree that this crap about the moon landings being fake is just that- crap.
If you want to believe that 50 years after the Apollo program ended that the progress with the modern space program is all perfectly fine, and normal, then that is your prerogative to believe that.
But personally, when I hear about NASA having to launch rockets from fucking Khazakhstan, while my lying, corrupt, pos govt. tries to tell me that it's all cool, and the 'new normal' i think that's a load of crap too. Something is very wrong, and this American ain't gonna accept any bullshit excuses from our govt. about space exploration being "too hard" or "too expensive." They are hiding, and withholding too much technology, and holding us [a free society] back. I'm quite certain that the longer we fall for the bullshit narratives, and excuses for why manned space exploration has stalled for the last half century, the worse it will be for us, our nation, and future generations.
Good day.
Money means everything. In World War II, technology advanced tremendously (ballistic missiles, atomic weapons, radars, jet aircraft, guidance systems) because there was a huge dedication of national wealth, talent, and labor to its development. Same thing with the Apollo program. It didn't happen spontaneously and it didn't happen by accident.
I am trying to educate you to the historical reality of events. The basic point is that THE PUBLIC DIDN'T CARE, and that was reflected in subsequent budgets. The people who were in a position to influence those budgets were persuaded that further flights to the Moon were too extravagant and directed funding to the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS). I would remind you that Musk is (currently) the richest billionaire in the world. That's what it takes to embark on a pet project. Notice that no one is stopping him. If you have the money, you have the key to the door.
The space program has never been "hijacked." It has always been a creature of government preference---and going to the Moon was a Kennedy initiative of an activity that was sponsored from the beginning by Johnson, all of the pre-landing Apollo program in fact. I don't like Johnson for all the right reasons, but being "against" manned space exploration is not one of them. If it hadn't been for Kennedy-Johnson, we wouldn't have gone to the Moon.
I have worked in the space business for 40 years, so I rather think my view is far more informed by facts, history, and technical understanding than your desire to find plotters under the bed. There is no "normal" in the space program. It has always been a preference---subject to fads among the legislators. If you can't see that, take a hard look. Musk is succeeding because he does not much depend on government funds (though they are a customer).
NASA doesn't launch rockets from Kazakhstan; the Russians do. This is inescapable when we have to travel to the ISS on Soyuz vehicles (thanks to NASA's failure to develop a successor to the Space Shuttle). Now we can get there on SpaceX Dragon capsules. But is is a sheer fact that space travel is hard and expensive. There are too many space enthusiasts in this country for any "too hard" message to ever have made way---and if you think that is a prevalent message, I haven't seen it in my adult life, so you are dreaming it up. Way too much "truther" mythology out there, imagining dragons that don't exist, and not enough clear vision. There is no secret technology being withheld. All of it is out for view, and reflects technology being continuously developed.
The only bullshit in this discussion is what you seem bound and determined to believe, in defiance of the facts. Do you seriously think that the Space Shuttle was an obstacle to space exploration? It was a good objective, but was compromised by budgetary constraints and wishful thinking generally. Yet it did put into orbit tremendous tools of astronomy. Do you seriously think that the probes to Mars were an obstacle to space exploration? They have surveyed where we would go and what we would find there. Do you seriously think that the ISS was an obstacle to space exploration? How else were we to understand the long-term effects of space flight? I am not otherwise impressed by the "science" that it purportedly accomplished, but it did at least give us a medical database, and space medicine is crucial to space exploration. I have no idea what you think "space exploration" would be, since you seem to have no conception of what goes into all this, how much it will cost, and no regard for the risks involved.
I'm not the one with a mistaken view. I've been watching all this since Sputnik first flew in 1957. I've been working in the field from the early 70s to the mid 10s. I've worked with former astronauts. I defer to no one in my criticism of NASA, but you are not close to the truth at all. Learn more and emote less.