Spacemens Luck

 

Where Tom Corbett, Captain Video, CMDR Corry and Other Spacemen Still Live

The state of America’s manned space travel program today is in disarray. With the US having no spaceship in it’s fleet capable of carrying personnel into space. And the only other means for American’s to get into space is via the Russian space fleet which has been temporarily (Hopefully) de-certified due to the failure of last weeks cargo flight to the ISS space station.

The reason we are in this position is because our national leadership has failed to keep their eye on the ball over the last ten or fifteen years and allowed our space program to decline to the point it is today.

What prompted me to right this article is I came across a classic failed pilot for a CBS TV series from 1959 named “Destination Space”. The movie over all is standard science fiction for day. But what I found interesting was the speech before a congressional sub-committee criticizing the congress and other leaders on their leadership in the space program. It is to my knowledge the first time that space travel was shown in a plausible political context that is relevant to this day. A leader of the congressional sub-committee suggests that space travel was not just a technological triumph and a great adventure but also costly and that financial justification is an important consideration as well.

I regret that there was only this one pilot episode and not at least one season of the show made. The film used a lot of stock footage from the earlier 1955 space travel movie “Conquest of Space”. Specifically the views of the “The Wheel” (space station) and the spaceship which is bound for the moon. In the source movie of the stock footage “Conquest of Space” A team of American astronauts leave their space station on the first mission to Mars.

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After the cancellation of NASA’s Constellation program, a plan to send human explorers back to the Moon by 2020, and then onward to Mars and other destinations in the Solar System, and the launch today of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, the countdown to the end of Americas manned space travel has begun.

With only 5 more scheduled Shuttle Missions left (see summary below) before the retirement of the Space Shuttle and now no follow on manned space travel program is planned or in the budget. The last acts of America’s supremacy in space are about to be played.

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If you haven’t heard already NASA’s mission is no longer manned space travel. With the decision to cancel the Constellation program there is no longer a plan for manned space flight for the United States.

NASA’s Project Constellation, was a plan to send human explorers back to the Moon by 2020, and then onward to Mars and other destinations in the Solar System.

Canceling NASA’s Moon-bound Constellation program is expected to cost the U.S. space agency $2.5 billion in contract termination liability and other closeout costs over the next two years. Add to that the $9 billion already spent developing the Orion crew vehicle and Ares rockets the total cost for a program that will never be completed is over $11.5 billion. All for nothing.

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NASA announced today, January 26, 2010, that the Mars Rover Spirit is no longer a rover. For nearly ten months now the little rover has been stuck with two of its six wheels inoperative. The decision was made, with regret I am sure, to give up trying to remove Spirit from her rut. NASA has made the decision to discontinue their 10 month attempt to get her back in motion.

NASA has re-designated Spirit a “Stationary Research Platform.” Here at Spacemen’s Luck we have decided to Call Spirit “Mars Base One.”

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