re: Is anyone else embarrassed about the state of our space program?

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Really, of all the areas that could benefit mankind, space travel is up near the top.

Our priorities are fricked.

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Seriously. I would really like to scan more than 3-5% of the sky for asteroids. Having them show up unexpected is getting annoying. I also really love identifying the really big near misses with like 3 days notice.

I'm good with eliminating entitlements and using that for space programs.

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While maybe my and many preceding generations didn't fully appreciate what y'all were doing, I think future ones will and will look at how our government treated your program as absolutely unforgivable. Y'all captured my imagination and ambition from childhood and into adulthood, and I'll try my best to make sure y'all's great contributions to society aren't forgotten. While I wasn't alive, I'm envious you got to work on the Apollo program, and wish you the best

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Thank you very much.

While I was a very small cog in a huge effort, I am quite proud of my contribution. I was lucky enough to be just the right age in just the right academic field to get in on the very ground floor of the space business.

I was lucky enough to know personally all astronauts up thru the first half dozen Shuttle flights. Once the Mission Specialiast started getting onboard I had no contact with them.

I was primarily in flight procedures development and training. The Apollo 13 crew was the one who I spent the most time with. That mission aged me a decade - good friends of mine up there with moment-to-moment life or death decisions.

Fortunately all the training I developed was for Lunar Rendezvous (Rescue - CM active) procedures so they never had to exercise them on any of the Apollo missions. I prayed they never got down to having to use any of the backup procedures I had helped diveloped - a lot of bad shite would have already had to happen before they came into play.

I still rank the Apollo 13 mission as the most technically challenging week in history. What happened had not been prepared for and simulated. Everything was developed ad hoc. thousands of engineers made razor thin life or death decisions and developed procedures for which there was no backup. It was the most amazing week of my life. I am humbled to have been in the same building with some of those guys.

NASA at that time was the epitome of what a government agency could be. There will never be another like it. Nobody was in it for personal glory or financial reward. The only driving motivation was to do what was right in the most efficient and reliable method possible. Never was a thought given to politics. Everybody was on board. The atmosphere was electric.

God I miss those days.

I was there when the spiral downward began too. I retired a,s soon as possible because the old spark had died out and it was all about cutting budgets and limiting potential. That was a sad time for me - I did not enjoy laying people off and continually redesigning for reduced goals.

This current segue into global warming proponent and muslim outreach center has left me nauseous.

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So, did we actually land on the moon?

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I actually had a relative (on my wives side) argue that point with me once.

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You can thank welfare loving liberals and war hungry conservatives for the sad state that NASA is in

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Absolutely. Both sides own the decline for various reasons. Florida senator Bill Nelson and Retired Senator John Glenn have probably done to most to help it but, they are fighting a lost cause.

Our nation's priorities are a hot mess.

Well we put a rover the size of a car on mars, and looked around for a while.

That was pretty awesome.

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Well, since none of you seemed to pay attention to this, NASA today launched the Orion spacecraft, which will theoretically be the craft that takes us to Mars and the asteroids. It is the successor to the Saturn V... which was made in the mid-60s.

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The Orion is the successor to the Apollo capsule, not the Saturn V rocket.

The Apollo capsule was carried to space by a Saturn V (a smaller Saturn took Apollo 8 up because it didn't have the lander).

Orion is carried by a Delta IV

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There are no stores to loot or racist causes to take up in outerspace.

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LINK

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It's absolutely criminal how we have neglected NASA and just left it to rot. So much incredible innovation and science has come from NASA and many of the technologies we enjoy today are here thanks to concepts developed by NASA. It's absolutely criminal how we have neglected the agency. We should've put a man on mars a decade ago. NASA needs a shite ton more funding and if I were president, I would direct as such to them like a hundred billion dollars a year or more.

But no, we'd rather spend it all fighting useless wars in the Mideast losing countless lives, endangering our status in this world and appeasing and coddling hoodrats and poor white trash with section 8, welfare and food stamps. It's embarrassing what our spending priorities are.

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, the last part especially. NASA is one of the GOAT agencies, and I loved learning about what they were researching.