and do you remember it? 'cos I do, i was there (not actually on the Moon of course, that would be silly, but I watched it on TV - live from an USAF hangar in the Arizona desert)

what were you doing in arizona?

aanway. we Totally landed on the moon if nothing else but because I said so.

as in returning to the moon then off to mars. I KNOW it would cost more money and i KNOW america is in a bad place financially and i KNOW they'll need to invade another country to claw their way out of it, but in the long run i realy DO want this to go ahead. Weve become a world of boring bastards. Were not going anywhere. We could argue and have hunger, famine, disease until the cows come home. Theres no guaranteed end to the problems the world has and postpoining human development while we wait for uncoporative poloticians to put aside their differences, and corrupt world leaders decide to do the honorable thing. If we wait for the worlds nations to disband the majority of their armed forces and rebuild their nations with successful education, health and transport systems. If we wait for the worlds unemployment to level off at zero and the third world countries have an infastructute to quickly and independently reach a propsperous level then i dont think we'll ever get around to going through space.

Listening to all of Bush's speach it really did inspire me. Not to vote for him, or to make me think hes a good guy, it inspired me to be an astronaut again. Not since i first learned of the Apollo moon landings, did i ever want to be an astronaut. I did for a while, until i learned that the current space program was poo and i didnt want to JUST go into orbit. I always wanted to go to other worlds, to go somewhere new and be the first doing it, to see something no one has before was such a driving force when i was about 10 years old that all i ever wanted to do was go into space. When i was a nipper i could recite space facts like nobodies business. Eventualyl my interest dropped when i figured that the desite to go to space was over so turned my attention to other things. i hope to GOD we go to the Moon and Mars again, i want to goto space and do all that stuff. The danger doesnt concern me, i just want to do it.

...to boldly go....

here here archie! We should all drink to being 10 again...

I was in Arizona with the aliens who were showing the Yanks how to fake the dam' moon landings, thank you very much. I was only pretending to be 5yrs old.

seriously in 1969 I was 5yrs old, I watched the Apollo missions with me Dinky Sikorsky SeaKing helicopter with winch and Apollo capsule, i had a stage separable Saturn V made from Fairy liquid bottles and cardboard cos I wasnt old enough to make the Airfix kit (i was 5!!!!!) and I watched James Buerk explain it all on telly - I didnt understand a word. At school we use to play being astronauts but you just looked like a t*t trying to do low G walking. Our teacher Mrs Barron tried to get us to do a project on it but I got into trouble for asking why the astronauts hadnt seen God seeing as the mad Catholic school teachers and priests were telling us that God lived beyond the clouds. Oh yeh at 5 I made the fatal mistake of blurting out "this Jesus stuff's a load of cr*p" i got totally panned, teachers could whup little kids back then.

I played with me Apollo capsule in the bath and used to torpedo it with my diving U-boat. I kept it for years then set fire to it years later trying to simulate re-entry with a piece of string stretched out me bedroom window to me mam's washing line. She went ballistic when the hot burning plastic melted her new Wilton.



Edited by - Tawakalna on 1/15/2004 4:38:07 PM

i remember being 10, i was in hospital a lot

I just thought - wasn't some company selling parts of the moons surface some time back?? plots of land and all. Imagine that -
*picks up phone*

"Mr Bush? - Hello - its Chips - am calling about your moon expedition!"

"oh - really - why is that son?"

" Cause your trepassin on my moon dust - pay me landing fee and rock tax please - or move 100 yards to the left.......................no - not your left, my left"..

oh that would be good fun

Chips


Hey........bush.............get awff mayyee laaaanddd

People have been trying to claim ownership of the moon for years and sell it off by the acre. It's always been international law that the moon cannot be claimed by any country but the law never stipulated anything about private ownership, hence the many claims of ownership by people. Still they make good gag gifts but I don't reckon to many claims would stand up in a court of law. Linkage!

i'm just saying taw that i think if we find a reason not to goto space we wont, and there are plenty of reasons not to, but its like when you see a girl you like. Theres always reasons not to ask her out, she might have a boyfriend, you might be a bit of a minger, you might be crap with talking to girls, you might not have any money so even if you DID go out, you couldnt take her anywhere nice etc.

I think the important thing is to keep pushing the boundries. We can say "lets sort things out down here first" as much as we like, but what were learning about our world is declining. apart from the bottom of the ocean and the depths of the jungle, the world has been licked and i for one am ready to send people into space as SOON as possible.

PLUS with the focus being on INTERSYSTEM travel, and NASA being pretty much tasked with Mars from now on, the developments for new propulsion, life support, space ships is gonna kick ass. The space shuttle will be decommisioned in 2010 (if this all goes thru) and a NEW space ship will be built for 2014. how freaking exciting is that. Ive only ever known the Shuttle but a new ship is just what i am looknig forward to.

Bush's speach may be all about winning votes but it captures the mind a treat when he talks about Shipyards on the moon, brand new ships to move us around, setting up the ISS for testing new spaceship stuffs (i.e. practical use for a change) and possible future missions to beyond. Lets face it, if we build a ship that can take us to Mars, its not gonna be hard to convert that ship to take us to (the moon with the ice and possibly water underneath). This is it i think. If we get this all right, we could be looking back to this time as the turning point in human history. Quite literally one of the most important feats ever performed.

Totally agree Arcon and as much as I find him unsettling, George W's cowboy attitude might be just what the space program needs.

I want to know one thing...where do I sign up for that job? I would love to work on the moon.

hey ynow im not even gonna discuss the whole morality of ait anymore. I made my point (prob a little too strongly now i think about) and i ant gonna start a flame war with me bestest buddies over it. Thing is for me its nowt new, seen it before the first time round, so i aint anything like as excited about it as you lot. i remember getting bored with it last time, by Apollo 15 no-one was interested anymore. actually no-one was interested by Apollo 13 but course it nearly got trashed so that made it interesting, but other than that drama it was all a big yawn. "oh yeah, the Yanks are going to the moon again.." "Really? seen this new washing powder its really good..." yes that was the spirit of 1973.

Rob, you wrote "work" on the moon, not "live" on the moon. Were you deliberately making a distinction?



Edited by - Tawakalna on 1/16/2004 1:09:25 AM

hypersonic travel would be kewl, to aus in 30 mins, and then home for tea and crumpets

tea and wombats you mean...

nah, maybe if i could fill the wombats with high explosives...