The moon or bust

Funny, as I was writing this, David Letterman discussed the future of the US in space with Chris Ferguson, the commander of the last flight of the space shuttle Atlantis.

This afternoon, I got a reminder that Tweets sometimes play time-warp games – I suppose when someone signs up for the first time.

A tweet on the TMA member’s only daily newspaper sent me to an old 2006 post on the Residency Notes blog,with their beautiful theme and graphics (why didn’t I think of that?).  The post concerned Slate.com’s complaints (yes, they’re still around, even today) about NASA and President Bush’s former proposal to put a permanent base on the moon. Why not a little time travel to a time when the US was still considering out of this world research?

It looks like NASA’s cuts may have limited the progress on the base.The recession/depression is reality. Wonder whether there’s any private money out there working on the idea?

NASA is working on a new lunar landing, though, called Morpheus.   You can even follow them on facebook.

I’d donate my own money to a permanent base. Great boon to research in low gravity, some place for kids to reach for and part of that horizon we’re always looking over. (Heinlein, Asimov,and Wall-E fan)