In its place, we'll be getting the Ares I.
Today, Ares got her cherry popped -- and that bitch needed a cigarette afterward. Yes, the very first test flight was successful. Like sex.
God damn, look at that slick motherfucker.
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people who feel like the space program is a waste of money. We've all met them from time to time. Their only argument seems to be that we should devote all that money towards the problems here on earth, when they don't realize that A) Earth will always have problems, and simply throwing wads of cash at them rarely ever works, and B) that's still no excuse to put all exploration and scientific research to a halt. And out of all the astronomically wasteful shit our government does, why do they have to pick on NASA? NASA gets shit for funding anyway.
The fact is that space is our future. I don't want to sound like some idealistic Captain Picard, but seriously, who can honestly deny it? Ideas like mining asteroids for minerals, terraforming and colonizing other planets, or orbiting solar panels around the sun to harness its energy even further are not kooky sci-fi theories. It's all possible -- certainly not within our lifetimes, but perhaps in our grandchildrens', or maybe even some of it in our childrens'. All we're lacking is motivation.
Right now, Mars is basically NASA's only goal. We want to send people there. That infamous "bombing" of the moon a couple weeks ago? Even that ties into Mars. We were seeing exactly how much water the Moon has on it, and if there's enough, we might eventually build a moon base that can sustain itself. That moon base will be used as the launch pad to Mars. To get to Mars, we would need all the fuel we can get, and since the vast majority of fuel is used up during takeoff, it's only logical to take off from the moon's much weaker gravity field.
In Michigan this summer, Logan had his friend from NASA come talk to us for a couple hours. This guy's designing the Mars Science Laboratory - basically a fucking tank... of SCIENCE. A science tank... IN SPAAAAAACE. PEW PEW PEW LASERS.
That box sticking out on top of the totem pole in the center? Yeah, that's a fucking laser. It's going to blast rocks and analyze the shit that's inside. From 7 meters away. And I made the tank comparison before, but did I mention that this thing is literally going to have the amount of torque of an actual tank? NASA's a little sick of getting their shit stuck in craters. This thing is a fucking beast... of SCIENCE PEW PEW.
I asked this guy how far we were off from an actual manned space flight to Mars. He said that there are just way too many factors which are always changing, and there's really no telling. Technologically though, there's nothing stopping us. We have the technologically to do it right now. It just depends on our willpower. He said that with the government's history of blowing these things aside, he's basically just given up hope of us going there in the foreseeable future. But there's a rise in corporate interests and / or really fucking rich people who are getting extremely excited over Mars and space in general, and he said that these guys are probably going to pave the way eventually since they're tired of seeing the government sit on its ass. One might see the word "corporate" and instantly cringe, but trust me, this is a very good thing. Columbus sailed for India for corporate interests.
He gave us two reasons why we need to go to Mars, and they were really fucking good reasons.
1) It's only logical to have more than one home base. If some catastrophic disaster wipes out everything on earth, the human race will still survive elsewhere.
2) Colonizing Mars will bring social upheaval. The colonists in the Americas felt disengaged with their motherland because they were on the other side of the planet. They didn't like a bunch of strangers telling them how to live their lives, and so they put their foot down once they got sick of Europe's shit. The American Revolution essentially created a domino effect in the western world. Europe saw how awesome we were, and so they eventually changed more along our ideals (or, the Enlightenment's ideals in general). At the moment, our industrialized world is almost in the exact same state Europe was when Columbus sailed - corrupt, lazy, indifferent, etc. We need something big to happen to shake us into our wits. A Mars mission could very well unify the human race.
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