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NASA Considers Putting an Asteroid Into Orbit Around the Moon

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IainB:
...Who knows? Assuming we're not alone, there's also the chance we may finally meet somebody really interesting to talk to. ;D
-40hz (January 09, 2013, 02:02 PM)
--- End quote ---
Heh.
I once saw this scrawled on a gents' lu wall in a corporation's offices:

"Is there intelligent life on earth?"

- and underneath it, in an entirely different hand:

"Yes, but I'm just passing through."

IainB:
I vote we consider putting NASA into orbit around the moon.

Renegade:
Hahahahaha~! ;D

Good ones, Iain! :D  :Thmbsup:

40hz:
I vote we consider putting NASA into orbit around the moon.
-IainB (January 10, 2013, 02:03 AM)
--- End quote ---

That was sorta part of NASA's original plan. :P

Unfortunately, the L5 space station was scrapped back in the mid-60s because the money was needed for "programs for the poor." One "socially responsible" senator of that era characterized NASA as an agency "using tax dollars to indulge in feats of stratospheric jugglery designed to impress children and fools."

Enough otherwise intelligent people apparently agreed with him on that point, such that the US space program was effectively gutted within ten years.

But what comes around goes around. Because any available money is now being channeled into homeland security and global military operations. So much so that there's nowhere near enough left over for infrastructure maintenance, education, research, or subsidized medical care.

Apparently somebody took to heart the attitude of the Senator Jack S. character in Al Capp's famous Lil Abner comic strip. In one scene, the Senate is debating spending bills and has just unanimously passed without debate an appropriation for a few million dollars to replace a swimming pool at a minor US embassy because the previous one "had been stolen." When the next agenda item - a vote to approve $50 to buy books for a rural library comes up - it provokes Senator Jack S. to snatch the paper out of the speaker's hands and rip it into tiny pieces while shouting "Nay! Nay! Nay! I'm against spending American money on Americans!!!"

IainB:
50 years of space exploration.
Huge image - really quite detailed.
You could also download it and then zoom into it to read the detail.
(Right-click image to expand/minimise.)

NASA Considers Putting an Asteroid Into Orbit Around the Moon

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