If you haven't heard by now, you've been living under a rock, moon landing mania has taken over on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission and the aging astronauts are calling for more space exploration. Now, I'm not in any way saying I believe that they landed on the moon in the first place but after reading so many for and against arguments on the net, I'm wary to even broach that subject so we'll stick to the "facts".
The astronauts, which include Buzz Aldrin and Eugene Cernan, are pleading to US president Obama to start increasing it's funding for space exploration to enable a trip back to the big cheese and maybe even Mars by 2020. I'm all for space exploration and to be honest I think the United States has lost its former competitive edge in space travel but the reality is that we are in a recession and it looks unlikely that this super mission will ever happen. The mission has already been named Constellation and is still in serious talks.
I personally think we our first priority should be domestic issues and by domestic I mean Earth. It's all great spending billions of dollars on a mission to Mars and the Moon but with the world the way it is today, I think we should be focusing on fixing this planet before we venture into the unknown. If you do believe in the moon landing which I'm sure many of you do, I read some interesting "facts" about the mission that I would like to share with you:
An estimated 600 million people watched the Apollo 11 landing live on television, a world record until 750 million people watched the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. Princes and Princesses clearly take preference.
The Apollo space programme cost was given as $25.4 billion, around $150 billion (£93bn) in today’s money. How many people would that money have fed?
One of President Nixon’s speechwriters had prepared an address entitled: “In Event of Moon Disaster”. It began: “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay to rest in peace.” If the launch from the Moon had failed, Houston was to close down communications and leave Armstrong and Aldrin to their death. So much for no man gets left behind.
I say put Mission Constellation on the back burner, for now, let's sort out what's happening right here and when that's under control, fuel the jets and say hi to ET for me!
