I'm really going to Florida, eventually.

[alexr_rwx]

You can totally write your congresscritters whenever you want.

http://www.house.gov/writerep/
http://www.senate.gov (button on the front page)

Today I wrote my representative the Honorable Allen Boyd to complain about the current state of NASA (budget cuts, fewer robots, but Goin' To The Moon And Mars!!) and about Iraq and the Downing Street Memos and how people don't seem to care about that whole "manufactured war" thing.

Today is for civic involvement. I also complained at some Tech police officers for driving motorcycles on the walkways. So that they could tell kids not to ride bikes on the walkways. This does not make me feel safer.

Comments

[reality-calls.livejournal.com]

So here's the deal with the new moon shot-- dubbed "Apollo on steroids" by NASA administrator Michael Griffin in a fairly blatant PR bid.  It's supposed to carry a crew of 6, 4 of whom would actually land on the moon, and the goal is to reach the moon by 2018, meaning in 13 years.  The original Apollo Project, Launched 43 years ago now,(almost half a century) carried 3 men to the moon and landed 2 of them and was set to be completed within 8 years.  So, at the current rate of "progress," in another 50 years we should be launching a project to take 12 men to the moon, land 8 of them, and complete it in 30 years.  Progress!

So why does it take over 40 years of advancements to cut the time/size ratio of a space shot by a mere 18.75%?  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the attitude toward this project is "Go as you pay" approach as stated by the Exploration Space Architecture Study assigned to lay out the timetable.  If I remember correctly, the attitude toward Apollo was somewhat the opposite.  Don't attitudes like this historically lead to projects chronically overrunning deadlines and budgets?

Also, as a humorous aside, the article in Aviation Week and Space Technology that I got this from also mentioned "an eventual push on to Mars that is so undefined there isn't even a date for a Mars mission."  Said Griffin, "We've not gotten out that far in our planning."

      "Live from the People's Republic"

[reality-calls.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I made a calculation error in the post.  The next moon project will be completed in *only* 26 years.

      "Live from the People's Republic"

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

*waves little flags* Hooray!

Richard, we can always trust you to lend a hand to keep our feet planted abreast of having our ears to the heartbeat of the long, long arms of the head of this great nation's brainiest agency.

Or something? Maybe I should take a nap...

[reality-calls.livejournal.com]

A supremely enlightening mix of metaphors, that!

      "Live from the People's Republic"