Comments on: Moon Pans

By: Irishman

Irishman — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 18:04:04 +0000

â€œIâ€™ve reached the point where I donâ€™t give a flip about sending humans to Mars. We should be developing the near-Earth environment first, and establish a space based infrastructure upon which manned missions to wherever we like could be built. Build up Earth orbit and L4/L5 and whatnot. Make things that can support themseves financially.â€?

The problem is, that was the philosophy of what we were trying to accomplish with Shuttle and Station. First build cheap access to space* (shuttle), then build low Earth oribit infrastructure, then work our way out. Of course all the people whine “we can’t even go to the Moon anymore” and “all we ever do is go around in circles around the Earth” and otherwise complain that low Earth orbit is too passe, too stupid, and we should be “out there”.

*Okay, so the Shuttle didn’t pan out the way it was intended, and didn’t live up to cheap access to space.

By: Chet

Chet — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 16:17:22 +0000

Regarding space exploration costs:
Would you rather spend $2 billion for the Space Shuttle of which most of the $ goes for salaries Or for $2 billion worth of 500 lb bombs, cruise missiles and smart munitions bounding defenseless people and communties into gore, dust and debris?
Just what could more than $400 billion/year accomplish versus the meager and underfunded $14 billion/year for NASA’s space, aviation, and technologies?
That’s why I agree with what The Galaxy Trio Says:
August 16th, 2005 at 1:14 pm
“Thereâ€™s a simple answer for the â€œfix the Earth firstâ€? crowd.

“Weâ€™re never going to fix those problems, no matter how much money we throw at them, so itâ€™s just plain dumb to stop doing anything else. If they continue to whine, slap them and put dirt in their hair.

“Iâ€™ve reached the point where I donâ€™t give a flip about sending humans to Mars. We should be developing the near-Earth environment first, and establish a space based infrastructure upon which manned missions to wherever we like could be built. Build up Earth orbit and L4/L5 and whatnot. Make things that can support themseves financially.”

By: CR

CR — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 06:33:41 +0000

What a pleasant surprise!

By: Bob L.

Bob L. — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 13:13:29 +0000

Speaking of your book, I was at the Natural History Muesum in NYC yesterday and saw your book in the giftshop. There it sat, right between books by Carl Sagan and Steven Hawking. Suprisingly, no books by Richard Hoagland.

By: Beche-la-mer

Beche-la-mer — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 01:29:47 +0000

As a journalist, I ought to be offended by the Galaxy Trio’s assertion about my colleagues, but unfortunately I find myself having to agree with it. I’ve got nearly 20 years’ experience in the field and learned the old-fashioned way (when there were still cadetships and on-the-job training): I hate to sound like an old fogey, but these new journalism graduates just don’t know anything about real journalism.
Problem is, they spend three years getting a degree in journalism and there’s no way they’re going to start right at the bottom (as we did in my day). They already know everything! Now, I had an honours degree in English Literature but I still had to make the coffee at my first job on a major monthly magazine. I didn’t get a byline for 12 months!

But, getting off my high horse, I think that the problem goes deeper than journalism being a dumbed-down profession: I think the population in general is not being taught critical thinking. That’s a problem with the education system, with schools focussed on getting high academic scores by force-feeding kids facts that they memorise, churn out in exams and then forget immediately.
Just today our daily newspaper has a front-page story on the shortage of science students in our universities, speculating that it’s because kids are being turned off science at high school by pedagogues who stand at the front of the classroom and bombard them with facts — with no context and no room for critical thinking — and simply expect to have the facts regurgitated in exams.

Oh, and by the way, also in today’s newspaper was an article about the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools. It’s finally reached Australia! Our federal education minister said he would not oppose it being taught in schools “if parents wanted it”. So here we go!

By: Sticks

Sticks — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 22:25:15 +0000

The Graunad was a Manchester based paper competing with the London based papers so had to rush even more so to keep up with the London crowd, hence the lack of care over the typing mistaks

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 21:11:07 +0000

The Galaxy Trio: I especially liked the irony you inserted in your comment. Your phrase “the journalism majors, without exception, weâ€™re, to put it blunty, dumber than rocks” contains two deliberate mistakes (or possibly just innocent typos?) highlighting the inadequate writing skills of journalists.

My guess is, they can’t all be that bad.

Having said that, one British national newspaper, the Guardian, has earned itself the nickname “the Grauniad” due to frequent typographical errors.