On Feb 4, 6:55*am, Michael Gallagher wrote:
If President Obama wants truly new and unique ideas for what he calls
a 21st century space program, he has one problem:

There aren't any.

Everyone talks about orbital refueling as the new idea, but its not
new at all. *It was at the heart of EOR considered for Apollo, but
even then, it was an "old" idea. *Aurthur C. Clarke described it in
his book "The Exploration of Space," published in 1951, so the British
Intperlanetary Society must have kicked the idea around before that.
Did anyone come up with them before they did? *And one of Clarke's
applications for it was refueling space ships bound for the Moon; the
book has a chapter on Moon bases. *So 20th Century. *Sorry, can't do
that!

In fact, I can't think of anything we could do in space that isn't a
20th century idea first implented then: *Space shuttle, space
stations, planetary probes, observing the Earth -- all old news. *No
new ideas. *So nothing to do.

I guess there's nothing for it except to repeal the National
Aeronautics and Space Act AND ban all space research and development
by all public or private US entities unless they do a new 21st century
idea which there are none of so of course, they do nothing. *And
hopefully, when the Chinese go to Mars, they'll put a token American
on their flight.

There's always Venus and even our moon(Selene) that's new as far as
accessible and more than paying their own way.

What's not to like about either of those?

~ BG