Today's OpEds
To The Moon And Beyond, Opinion , Michael Griffin, Hartford Courant
“The Pilgrims had to learn to survive in a strange new place across a vast ocean. If we are to become a spacefaring nation, the next generation of explorers is going to have to learn how to survive in other forbidding, faraway places across the vastness of space. The moon is a crucially important stepping stone along that path – an alien world, yet one that is only a three-day journey from Earth.”
Moon base: Boon or boondoggle?, opinion, Chicago Tribune
“What supporters and opponents of a moon base fear most is a repeat of the International Space Station, widely considered one of NASA’s worst failures. That facility has not delivered on promised research benefits and brought few inspiring images of exploration from its perch in low Earth orbit. “This (moon base) is the space station writ large. It’s building something just for the purpose of having something for people to do in space,” said astrophysicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas, a Nobel laureate and frequent critic of the manned space program.”
Space projects are wasting U.S. funds, The Daily Evergreen
“The lack of enthusiasm for this international collaboration may foreshadow what will happen to additional lunar and Mars projects. Space exploration reminds me of people who start a home project, get very excited about it, then loose steam and move onto something else. The original project is left half-finished and is quickly forgotten, although much time and money has gone into it. For a while, everyone was supporting the ISS, but now attention has switched to the moon, and even more excitement has ensued with the discovery of possible water on Mars.”