[meteorite-list] Bush, Obama, the "alien" perspective and a bit of science, too

[Darren Garrison]

On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:28:01 -0800 (PST), you wrote:

>2: Having said that, NASA seem, now, to be committed to a return 
>to the moon. I am delighted by that as a citizen of the world. Only 
>the US can really afford such a venture and it was Bush who made
> the commitment. 

I think pretty much every president since the end of Apollo gave some
lip-service to the idea of going back to the moon or to Mars when they thought
it gave them a political boost-- but those ambitious goals are always quickly
forgotten.  We went to the moon with the Apollo program not because the
politicians cared about science but because they wanted to beat the Russians.
If we do go back to the moon and to Mars, it'll be to beat the Chinese.  Except
I don't think that we will beat the Chinese.  China and India are serious about
developing their space programs, and you can't tell me that they don't have a
level of technology that can reach what we had in the 1960s-- and not only will
their economies be bigger than the US economy in the 1960s, they are likely to
pass the US economy of TODAY-- we are on our way down from being the top dog
(and a new president isn't going to stop that).  I expect China to beat us back
to the moon.  Maybe India, too.  Especially if they decide to pool resources.
Japan has space ambitions, too (and the world's second largest economy).  Europe
could afford an Apollo if they wanted it.