Neil Armstrong To NASA: You're Embarrassing 409
astroengine writes "Neil Armstrong, Apollo legend and outspoken critic of NASA's current direction for human spaceflight, was joined by three other space experts to address Congress on Thursday. It wasn't pretty. Amongst the other criticisms was Armstrong's tough statement: 'For a country that has invested so much for so long to achieve a leadership position in space exploration and exploitation, this condition is viewed by many as lamentably embarrassing and unacceptable.' He might have a point, but Apollo 17's Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, suggested the shuttles should be brought out of retirement to fill the U.S. manned spaceflight gap — a suggestion that probably rolled some eyeballs."
To Congress (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unsurprising (Score:3, Informative)
What a lot of people do not realize is NASA never really 'had' the money for the moon shots. The Air Force had it all. Every single missile was 'on loan' from our defense program. They had the money to do the research and get contractors to build the lander/capsule. The people, the money, the resources were coming out of our defense program. It was THAT big it didnt even make a dent in it.
NASA has always been 'underfunded'. The 60s we were in a good spot where we had enough missiles to wipe out our enemy's of the time. So a few dozen were marked redundant and donated to the moon shot program under direct orders from the top.
Since the SALT talks of the late 70s and early 80s we have dismantled our heavy lifting programs. As the moon shots were really showing precision bombing. The exercise was not lost on moscow. Why did we do that? The same program that put us on the moon was the same one built to deliver bombs. We have by treaty stunted our growth.
People always think it was the Republicans (Score:4, Informative)
The Democrats seriously have a lot of people brainwashed to think they're for the little guy.
The bailout was bipartisan and not targeted to Republican supporters.
Citigroup, the largest recipient, in fact donated much more to Democrats than to Republicans.