"Jeff Findley" wrote:

:
:"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
.. .
: "Jeff Findley" wrote:
: :"Scott Lowther" wrote in message
: ...
: :Because I used to think like you, up until I started getting my
: :aerospace engineering degree and started looking at why launch costs are
:so
: :high.
:
: And just why is that, other than that there's been no real commercial
: driver to get them down?
:
: :Sending a few NASA astronauts to the moon won't make us any more of a
: :spacefaring nation than Apollo did, so what's the point of Apollo 2.0?
:
: Well, as you pointed out, right now most of the American people could
: give a fig about space. Not sending people isn't the way to get or
: keep their interest. When we were going someplace (before NASA got
: boring) a lot more people were interested.
:
:Interest in Apollo dropped rapidly after the successful return of Apollo 11.
:The same drop in interest also happened for shuttle, shuttle/Mir, and
:shuttle/ISS. What's to stop that same drop for Apollo 2.0? What will be
:fundamentally different so that interest will be retained for longer than
:the first few flights?

The fact that it will be an ongoing program. You get a few flights to
the Moon, then you start putting in a base. Along there somewhere you
start working toward going to Mars. The idea is to keep pushing
outward, not do the same thing over and over again.

People lost interest because the whole goal was wrong - 'routine
access to space'. People aren't interested in 'routine' things.

: There's your point. Or do you think we'll somehow become "more of a
: spacefaring nation" by killing human access to space outright?
:
:Human access to space does not necessarily equal NASA human access to space.
:I'd like to see NASA start pulling back from taking control of all aspects
f human access to space and see them start to utilize commercial resources.

Of which there aren't any. End of human space flight.

:Unfortunately, Apollo 2.0 does none of that. There is some lip service
:being paid to commercial resupply of ISS, but the entire foundation of
:Apollo 2.0 is NASA, right down to the launch vehicles and launch facilities.

Nothing stops anyone else from buying the same (or other) vehicles and
sending people.

:I'm not against NASA returning to the moon, but I am against the current
lan which lets NASA retain control of everything. Specifically, launch
:services can be purchased from US providers.

And how many of them have vehicles capable of putting in a Moon base
in the works? How many of them have vehicles capable of a Mars
mission in the works?

--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn