Thanks to NASA, we didn't have to wait a whole week before writing about space travel again. Thanks, y'all. You all do an inky heart good.
(Oh, yes, the boys and gals at NASA will understand the difference between y'all and you all, which is very little. Why do you think Ray McKinnon was cast so prominently in Apollo 13? He has Dixie in his voice. As did many of the real-life engineers working on the space program in the early days, and not just then. Maybe because NASA appeals to the Southerner's taste for adventure, and the cowboy way of riding off into the sunset for parts unknown.)
Only days after it leaked that Jeff Bezos, he of Amazon and money, had plans for near-Earth space, NASA let it leak that it too had plans. And if Jeff Bezos thinks he sees progress in the heavens, it should be good enough for government work.
Some outfit called Ars Technica, a website of IT news, got aholt of NASA's plans and published them. No word if the leak was approved from on high. But NASA hasn't disputed anything. In fact, the website's article has professional-looking graphics explaining the whole thing.
It's only been two months since Vice President Mike Pence gave NASA the thumbs-up on a new space program. And considering the last administration all but gave up on the last frontier, it was a welcome commencement. What is it about vice presidents and the space program?
Space engineers--there's an occupation!--have been working on a plan since the veep's speech, and NASA is already letting bids.
There's to be a human landing by 2024.
Not only that, but a permanent lunar base. Yearly flights to that base to resupply. And a decade-long project that would incorporate NASA and private rockets, robots and Buck Rogers-es. There would be long-term stays by certain crews. Something called a Lunar Gateway, which we think would be a space stopping point between rocks. And searches for water on the moon.
Guenter Wendt would be happy. He may have been born in Germany, but he was 100 percent all-American in the end. And you can bet after the Apollo 1 fire, when other contractors had been in charge, astronauts made damn sure Herr Wendt--oops, that is, Mister Wendt--was back where he belonged, as the last human they saw before the blue turned to black.
There we go again. Another space story, another rabbit hole. Who can help it? The keyboard just a-shakes when the topic of space comes up. Did you know Deke Slayton gave Neil Armstrong the option of replacing Buzz Aldrin with Jim Lovell? No, really. He decided against it because . . . .
"And since I digress constantly anyhow, perhaps it is as well to eschew apologies altogether and thus prevent their growing irksome."--Mark Twain
Of course, there are obstacles. The first: money and politics. Word has it that the administration wants to fund more money for NASA by dipping into reserves for the Pell Grant program.
That sounds like a poison pill. Nobody but nobody thinks that will fly in Congress. It's strange that the Trump administration would include such a thing while sending the vice president out to announce the initiative. Then again, what's normal about this administration?
Other obstacles have to do with hardware. If we're going to land on the moon again in 2024, NASA should get started. And it has. Boeing is one of the contractors on an ongoing launch system in place for years. The plan is to use that system for the new program. But will it all work together? Remember, this is a government program. Somebody's going to make a Phillips screwdriver for flat-head screws.
And will the American people want to spend this kind of money--into the billions--to get back on the moon? Let's hope so.
This is a pioneering nation. The only real question should be, what will he, or she, say when first stepping on the moon again? The best line has been used.
Editorial on 05/26/2019