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| Waning crescent Moon from ISS, tweeted by ISS expedition 38 crew member Koichi Wakata [NASA/JAXA]. |
Leonidas Papadopoulos
Americaspace.com
"Perhaps the biggest obstacle towards charting a course back to the Moon, is the ‘been there, done that’ mentality that is very popular among many within the space community, in and out of NASA. This view, also shared by the space agency’s current leadership, has caused much controversy among space advocates ever since it was expressed by President Obama during a speech at the Kennedy Space Center in 2010. Elon Musk, CEO of the highly successful Space Exploration Technologies Corporation or SpaceX, echoed NASA’s current stance on the matter, during a recent interview: “The next step is to maybe send people beyond low Earth orbit to a loop around the Moon, possibly land on the Moon — although I’m not super interested in the Moon personally, because obviously we’ve done that and we know we can — but maybe just to prove the capability.”
Americaspace.com
"Perhaps the biggest obstacle towards charting a course back to the Moon, is the ‘been there, done that’ mentality that is very popular among many within the space community, in and out of NASA. This view, also shared by the space agency’s current leadership, has caused much controversy among space advocates ever since it was expressed by President Obama during a speech at the Kennedy Space Center in 2010. Elon Musk, CEO of the highly successful Space Exploration Technologies Corporation or SpaceX, echoed NASA’s current stance on the matter, during a recent interview: “The next step is to maybe send people beyond low Earth orbit to a loop around the Moon, possibly land on the Moon — although I’m not super interested in the Moon personally, because obviously we’ve done that and we know we can — but maybe just to prove the capability.”
"Maybe the best answer to this viewpoint has been given by the late Neil Armstrong, during a testimony on the House Committee on Science and Technology in 2010. “Some question why
"America should return to the Moon”, Armstrong said during his testimony. “After all,” they say, “we have already been there.” I find that mystifying. It ‘s as if 16th Century monarchs proclaimed that “We need not go to the New World, we have already been there.” Or if President Thomas Jefferson announced in 1808 that Americans “need not go west of the Mississippi, because Lewis and Clark have already been there.”"
Read the editorial at Americaspace.com, HERE.
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