Space Program...What happened to it anyway??

I was thinking about this the other day. When I was younger, the space program was going great, sending people in space on a consistent basis. And here we are some 45 plus years later, and we can't even get a shuttle to stay up? How could we walk on the moon in 1969, and yet all these years later, the program has regressed! It just seems odd that we have not advanced further in the space program?? What are your thoughts people in their 40's plus??

Space Program...What happened to it anyway??layouts for music myspace

Budget has a lot to do with it.. naturally you can't do this major things without the money... but I don't think that's the full answer.

Firstly, the space program was really a part of the cold war. Because the USSR got satellites and men into space before the US, there was a great drive of national feeling to beat them at getting a man on the moon. You'll notice after that was achieved, things started to go down hill rapidly.

Secondly, I think there's a much greater mood of selfishness in today's society, which has displaced the desire to do great things together (ie. as a society). There has been many decades of relative peace and prosperity (in the western world) and, in my opinion, this has made people "dumb, fat and lazy". Society now is content to focus on self-enjoyment things - largely driven by the corporate push to buy more "stuff".

Finally, I think that there's a level of risk aversion which goes along with being prosperious. After the second world war, with all it's death and huge risky endevours, the risks involved in sending men into space were just accepted as normal. Nowadays we baulk at risky endevours and don't seem to be prepared to take chances, either with our lives or with our wealth.

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We are now in national debt, Wherner vonBrauhn is dead (sorry for sp), and Bush feels like it would make 'The people of these great states to hate me. And we cant have that!'

Although, I am nowhere near 40.... =)
The space program has stagnated because of a stingy Congress, and an apathetic American public.
2 words

Budget -----cuts
We have become risk adverse. Everything we do, whether at work or play, and everything our society does is designed to minimize the risk of litigation. Our judicial system is eating the national organism like a ramphant cancer, and everything and everyone is either hiding or fleeing. Put another way, our dreams and our can do attitude are but a distant memory. If there is ever a return to the space program it will come from another place; from somewhere beyond the reach of our predatory legal system.
I am 40plus. I agree that when we were young we imagined lunar bases and manned Mars missions by the year 2000. It has been a huge disappointment.

There was controversy over budget spending even during the Apollo missions. But America understood the goals of reaching the Moon before 1970 and it was accomplished.

Following that, NASA couldn't come up with any clear mission objectives and the American public lost interest. The budget cuts soon followed due to recession in the 1970's. As I understand it, the Reagan administration favored unmanned probes to the more expensive manned missions and it set the tone for the next 20 years.

The shuttle design was flawed from the start. It was not the best design in the 1980's. It was the cheapest. I can remember reading science magazines in the late 70's which stated that the new shuttles would be taking off at a rate of one per month. Setbacks and failures moved that to 3 or 4 per year.

Wars and the defense budget have sucked the American taxpayer dry. The few dollars that are left can be budgeted towards other programs including the space program.

Considering the money that NASA has had to work with, probes have given us much valuable information about our Solar System.

It is thanks to the aging space shuttles that we can refocus on manned missions. The shuttles will soon be replaced with more technologically advanced and more efficient models. A new space race to landing a man on Mars has renewed interest from the public. This all hopefully will reflect in more dollars to the program.

Thankfully, Bush Jr has taken a leadership role in a goal of constructing permanent moonbases. Unfortunately, he is also a warmonger.

It would probably help if more people were informed of the multitude of benefits we have received as a result of the space program. Also, it might help if NASA presented more goals to the American public to stir more interest and support. It is congress and the White House which determine funding amounts. This can only increase if the public demands it.

Until then, it is good to stay in touch with what the unmanned probes are accomplishing. Much of the information they gather is truly amazing.
Yup, I miss the glory days too. I would suggest that two reasons contribute to the decline. One is the decline in enthusiasm of the taxpayers for what was, after all, an expensive endeavor after the success of the Moon landing.

The other reason would be the Space Shuttle itself. You'll recall that the whole point was to come up with a re-usable "space truck" that was to make it very cheap to get materials and people into orbit. It turned out to be much more expensive to maintain and operate than they had ever dreamed. And when the Challenger blew up on take-off it became clear that it never would live up to the hope of economic space travel. I suspect that the International Space Station is largely there to simply give the space shuttle something to do. I suppose, at that point in time, they didn't want to just give up on it.
If you measure progress by how far we have sent a human being from earth, then we have gone backwards. But sending men to the moon and having them return safely was as much a political exercise as a scientific one. It was to show up the Soviets and build up pride in the American public. Not that it didn't advance science, but that was probably a fringe benefit to politicians. Once we got there, public interest waned, and funding dried up.

Since then, the Soviet space stations have done much to explore the biological effects of long stays in 0g on the human body. The shuttle, while it may not be the perfect launch vehicle, has looked at how we do perform a wide range of tasks in space, such as repair and performing scientific experiments in 0g. All of this is paving the way for the space stations of the future, which is IMHO is a more worthwhile endeavor than racing to the moon.

But perhaps the most exciting advance (for me at least) is that privately-funded craft have reached space, and it probably won't be long before ordinary folk (well okay, rich ordinary folk ) will be able to escape the atmosphere and look down at Earth. So I'd say we have come a long way.
When vehicles leave the Earth's magnetic field they are subject to radiation micrometeorites and extremes of temperature. The first astronauts to venture away from the van allen belt failed to report the flashes in their eyes until they returned to Earth. When particles travelling at high speed encounter the Earth's magnetic field, light is produced, it is one of the reasons why life has flourished here.
well back in the days of the apollo missions man was exploring the moon, Then after we went there so many times there was no reason to go back because for one thing its very costly and the american people and congress did not want to spend any more money on it, Then enter all the different whitehouse administrations and peoples in congress and the bickering about going back to space it had put everything on hold and in disarray, i was around in the apollo era and I too thought we would be on Mars by now, But finally america has came to their senses and realized that hey, it may be in our best interest to locate a place that we can retreat to once earth has been used up, So now president Bush has gave the greenlight to nasa to go to mars and eventually beyond, if one thinks about it , it only makes sense to do so, Its about time the american government along with the ESA has opened their eyes
yes one could call it a shame... but..

why do we have a space-program ?

to get to know science output from it.

This can be achieved by sending unmanned probes what is done multiple times a year.

sooo why do we need a shuttle ? why do we need people anywhere else than onboard the ISS ?

the science outcome is more and more worse, cause we already know lots of things. So along with that where you get money from in times the average citizen in the US wanted to see Sadam Hussein bleed in iraq.

and why ?

General opinion today .. better to have fuel for the car than people on the moon.

But the situation may change if Helium3 is needed for nuclear fusion, which can be found on the moon in larger ammounts. wait another 20 years and see us flying again.