Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
Why didn't we? The torch was being passed from one generation of politicians to another, the first generation was typified by FDR and JFK, these politicians believed in building stuff, LBJ was a transitional figure, he supported to Moon program, but also supported the expansion of welfare, and guess that the politicians after than discovered? It is easier to buy votes with direct transfers of money to potential voters that to actually build stuff. You see after launching Apollo, there was less money to go back into greedy politicians greasy hands because Moon hardware was so expensive, food stamps was much more lucrative for politicians than sending people to the Moon. You could also hire bunch of unskilled bureocrats that shuffle paper around alot more easily than you could hire skilled NASA technicians. You see if the NASA technicians fail, you have spectacular explosions than make the politicians that funded them look bad, but if they shuffle paper ad don't do it correctly, who's going to know?Reynard said:
Moonbase Alpha was the next logical step after the Apollo program, actually building a Moonbase would have been a lot more risky than just hiring 100,000 bureaucrats to mindless shuffle paper, maybe it doesn't make for interesting science, but the politicians don't care about they, they want to create government jobs with little risk and low skill requirements so those jobs can be created more easily, basically a way to waste taxpayers money to get politicians reelected. Creating an ambitious space program adds an unnecessary level of risk, and I might add, Space 1999 was a British television show. So let me ask a question, Could Great Britain have built a Moonbase if it really wanted to? I believe Europe (not including Russia and the East Block) could have sent men and women to the Moon if they really wanted to, but their politicians deemed it risky, and its much easier to spend the same amount of welfare and buy votes that to build a Moonbase where an accident might happen and people might die!
It is a bit disappointing that its the year 2015, and we have no space colonies, no Moon bases, we are only talking about such as part of a Role Playing Game as opposed to really doing it!
