Return to Flight

Well, they finally got the shuttle program going again. woo hoo. My question: Why did they bother creating the shuttle to begin with? Why did they follow up a series of silly little moonwalks with a silly shuttle program????? Instead of wasting time and huge amounts of money on a meaningless shuttle, they should have built a colony on the moon. People were bored with the Apollo program and therefore unwilling to pay for it. Of course they were bored, all they did was plan brief missions where they bounced around on the moon for a few hours. Five or six missions of that nature is more then enough. Instead of planning endless pointless moon hops until Congress wisely cut off the money, they should have started planning a colony program as soon as Apollo 12 came back. That would have kept people engaged and the money flowing. Instead they did skylab, which nobody remembers and then created the shuttle, a stupid idea from its inception. And instead of doing the logical thing - build a lunar station- they waste time and money on a orbiting space station that can serve no useful purpose.

Getting into space is absolutely essential to our future. It will be the lifeblood of our society and our salvation. We can stop fighting useless wars on earth and shoot for the stars. We don't have to worry about population pressures. The development of space technology will provide advancement normally only possible under the impetus of war. Solving the problems of colonization in space will provide us tools for survival here on Earth. I can go on and on, the space program has the potential to be the single most important program of the nation. It could also create a global community as different nations pool their resources.

NASA is a completely useless organization that has screwed up the space program. Once it reached the moon, it's usefullness disappeared. It should be killed and replaced by an international coalition (with both government and private sector members) that might actually get something done. Probably at half the price.