What? No talk about the Mars Rover?

[PvK]

Originally posted by Narrew:
... But I heard a great come back, If the King and Queen of Spain decided NOT to fund Christopher Columbus, where would the world be today.

The pessimist in me thinks that there are too many people that would like to go back in time and stop Columbus from discovering the new world, sorry Rutha, though I don't doubt Erickson made it over here earlier, but they didn't have the cash to capitalize on it
...

Well I wouldn't have turned down Columbus for budget reasons...

... on the other hand, wiping out all the indigenous cultures of the Americas wasn't cool in my book.

I also don't think "lack of cash" explains why the Scandinavian colonists left.

But I'm mainly just being contrary.

PvK

[Fyron]

Those English, French, Spanish and Portugese conquerors were nasty people... Of course, you have to keep in mind that most of the indigenous peoples that died died from diseases carried by Europeans for which they had no immunity to at all, and so the diseases were fatal, rather than just inconveniences.

[ January 10, 2004, 22:51: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Cipher7071]

A few years back, there was a program to design a truly reusable space vehicle called "Venturestar," or perhaps "Venture Star." That may be what was Narrew was referring to below for the topic of a Google search.

[ January 11, 2004, 03:08: Message edited by: Cipher7071 ]

[Kamog]

According to this article, it is expected that Bush will announce a manned mission to Mars. Also, a Moon base is to be constructed within the next 15 years.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994551

[Captain Kwok]

Isn't it interesting to see how the administration is quick to "latch" on to the early success of the latest Mars mission and grab the positive publicity and make all these grand statements about future exploration...when the real guys are making it really happen at NASA despite facing cuts and cuts for the Last two decades?

[Narrew]

Originally posted by Captain Kwok:
Isn't it interesting to see how the administration is quick to "latch" on to the early success of the latest Mars mission and grab the positive publicity and make all these grand statements about future exploration...when the real guys are making it really happen at NASA despite facing cuts and cuts for the Last two decades?

I was listening to Coast to Coast on the way home late one night a month or 2 ago and who ever was speaking said that Bush was going to make an announcement to get back into space, the thing is he may be using the the recent success as the "right" time, but it sure beats talking about it right after the Last shuttle disaster or a "lull" in news, because you can be sure that there will be many people saying why spend the money to go "back to space, lets spend it at home", so I am glad he has brought it up because we will need all the positive momentum we can get.

Of course I am biased, I wish we hadn't stopped working in space all those years ago, the longer we take to get back at it, the longer it will be until private enterprises get involved, and until then it will just be governments doing it.

And of course I have read too many Sci-Fi books about space yards and exploration, so I can be labeled naive.


ps yea I think it was the Venture Star, going to look it up now...

[Narrew]

yep it was VentureStar, but it was cancled in 2001, doh, I could have sworn that I heard that a place in eastern Washington (in the flat planes west of Spokane) was in the running for a space port/launch site, damn that sucks, now what they going to use, the shuttle cant Last much longer, maybe if there is some funding, they will restart VentureStar, but more than likely someone else will have a "pet project" and they will start all over.

I swear, who ever thought it was a good idea to destroy all the Saturn Rocket blueprints should be whipped with a wet noodle *sigh*