Embarrassing

Neil Armstrong isn’t thrilled with the state of NASA. In a talk to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, the first man on the moon said:

We will have no American access to, and return from, low Earth orbit and the International Space Station for an unpredictable length of time in the future.

For a country that has invested so much for so long to achieve a leadership position in space exploration and exploitation, this condition is viewed by many as lamentably embarrassing and unacceptable.

A lead, however earnestly and expensively won, once lost, is nearly impossible to regain.

Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon said in the same meeting:

Get the shuttle out of the garage down there at Kennedy (Space Center), crank up the motors and put it back in service.

You want a launch vehicle today that will service the ISS? We’ve got it sitting down there. So before we put it in a museum, let’s make use of it. It’s in the prime of its life, how could we just put it away.

While NASA’s shuttle program may not have been everything it as supposed to be, it is hard to disagree with these guys that the shuttle is better than nothing.

NASA seems set on Mars. The “let’s go back to the moon” mission got canceled in chase of the red planet. While I am excited about Mars, I am doubtful I will have the experience my parents did, watching images, beamed from space, of man walking on another surface.