My friend Michelle just sent me a question that I thought would make an interesting blog post. Her question:
If we went to the moon in 1969, why aren’t we going now? NASA first says money, then says it’s radiation that cannot be flown through. Did the radiation become more dangerous? can radiation grow? I say no to both and guess money. And then I say why isn’t there money? And then I say we spent it all on useless wars. Do you have an opinion on this? We discussed this at work, and it was the most intellectually challenging discussion I have ever had here.
Yes, yes I do have an opinion on this. First let me say that I am not aware of any statements that NASA has made regarding not going back to the Moon because of radiation. This sounds more like Moon Hoax propaganda. However, the Sun’s radiation does increase, but by such a small amount that over even 40 years it would be hard to measure. Even over the last 2000 years, the Sun’s output has remained virtually stable, only varying by about 0.1%. Only on the scale of millions of years would we notice the increase. In about one billion years, the Earth will be so hot that life as we know it will not be able to exist.
The real reason we aren’t going back to the Moon is an almost complete lack of public interest or political will. The Apollo project was cancelled due to the lack of political and public support. That support began to wane almost the instant Neil Armstrong’s foot was placed on the Moon. It hasn’t returned. Politicians these days lack any real vision for the future and spend most of their time pandering to the electorate on social issues and having their palms greased in smokey back rooms.
I think the biggest problem is that Americans are just plain lazy. Kennedy said:
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…
I think a lot of people miss that last part. Doing hard things keeps us challenged and keeps us innovating, but we haven’t done anything hard in a long time, probably since the Moon landings. Nothing we have done since has matched that and we haven’t even really attempted to do anything special.
So what now? Personally, I think the United States is done. Unless something big happens in the next few years to really motivate us as a people, we will recede into history just as our European forbearers have. Our time as the world’s leader is over and that task has been handed off. So good luck to India and China. I see them as dominating the next 100 years of progress and history.
