US Space Program Makes a Come Back
Return to the Moon
Former astronaut Neil Armstrong advocates for continuing the US Lunar Exploration Program. Redirecting federal focus to Mars landings and settlement under the Obama made members of The Mars Society, but others wanted to return to Luna to mine resources and set up a launch station to our neighboring planet.
By 2015, private space ventures were prepared to travel to the Moon and set up bases and spaceports. America already had a dozen spaceports, and Canada had one. Google sponsored an X-Prize for designing lunar landing craft for 2015 and several contestants were ready to launch in 2013.
NASA found 200 things that can benefit humanity on the Moon, so it is a good idea to go back.
Conspiracy Theory
Videos have surfaced that illustrate a spacecraft already sitting on the moon before the historic Apollo 11 landing when Neil Armstrong took the first small step. Some believe that the spacecraft already there is the reason for discontinuing the US Space Program: To cover up the identity and nature of the structure.
Regardless of the rationale for discontinuing exploration and analysis of the Moon's surface, NASA insisted that US lunar artifacts on the surface must be protected by law, but the USA supposedly exploded a bomb on its surface in 2009. In 2017, however, the Internet contains several articles stating that the explosion was actually the collision of two American spacecraft.
The thriller Apollo 18 sides with the conspiracy theorists who believe a spacecraft as well as an outpost were already sitting on the Moon when Apollo 11 arrived.
The poster of the video below, Nalexo, also feels that a structure was bombed around the time the lunar missions ended, in order to eliminate it.
The Moon Express company is approved by the US government for a private lunar landing in 2017. NASA leadership says that the Moon is the gateway to NASA's exploration future.
Perhaps the US was launching UFOs from the moon during the Cold War? Some readers ascribe to that theory and it makes for good science fiction stories and thought-provoking conversations.
Perhaps the USA and USSR were testing various unmanned spacecraft that were left on the lunar surface, either crashed or successfully landed. If military dominance was behind such possible testings, then it is reasonable for both nations to protect this information as top secret. Many of the public would like America to send people to the moon to learn the truth about this, as well as to set up a launch base for flights to Mars.
The Obama administration advocated for proceeding straight to Mars to colonize that planet and to extract valuable ores like iron ore from the asteroid belt just beyond it. The subsequent Trump administration seemed more friendly toward the notion of returning to Luna to mine for any ores present and to gather ice for a water resource.
The Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) was established in 2004 to support NASA in providing analysis of scientific, technical, commercial, and operational issues in support of lunar exploration objectives and of their implications for lunar architecture planning and activity prioritization.
— NASA, Destination MoonOuter Space Jobs Increased Markedly After 2011
On August 5, 2010 only 67 job listings appeared for the US Space Shuttle program in. The program ended in July 2011, but our interest and plans in space did not.
By August 2017, with expansion of the US Space Program into the private sector with companies like SpaceX and Planetary Resources, aerospace job listings reached over 25,500 openings in the USA. America had long planned space exploration and aerospace businesses before 2011.
Leading aerospace companies consistently hiring:
- Lockheed Martin
- Boeing
- Triumph Group
- Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems
- Ball Aerospace
- Raytheon
- UTC Aerospace Systems
- Parker Hannifin
- Belcan
- The Aerospace Corporation (TAC)
- Honeywell
- L-3 Communications
- Rockwell Collins
- Pratt and Whitney
- Bae Systems
Many of these corporations are in the NASA Commercial Crew.
Ignoring the Moon to Face Mars
With John Glenn's passing in 2016, the Mercury astronauts are all gone. Many of the Gemini space explorers are also history. The passing of Apollo 11 Mission Commander Neil Armstrong left the active Buzz Aldrin to advocate for eschewing the Moon and venturing toward Mars.
Michael Collins, who stayed aboard the ship orbiting Luna while the Eagle sat on the lunar surface, never wanted to return to space, according to a children's book about Apollo 11. Buzz Aldrin wants another generation to return us to outer space.
Despite government funding cuts, NASA's Commercial Crew partnerships take the USA farther into space than ever before, to extract resources from the Moon and from the asteroid belt beyond Mars. Privatized space flight brought forward by the X-Prize and a dozen American spaceports, along with advancing technologies, brought down the wall that our veteran astronauts decried.
Wilbur and Orville Wright, 1903
The Mercury Program, 1959
Project Gemini
The Apollo Program
US Space Shuttle Program
Get Yourself to Mars
Sources
- Collins, M. Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys. 1974
- Collins, M. Flying to the Moon: An Astronaut's Story. 1994
- Simply Hired employment listings, 2010, 2015, 2017.
- Sutton, J. Apollo at Go. 1963.
- NASA Lunar and Planetary Institute. Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG) www.lpi.usra.edu/leag/ Retrieved August 10, 2017.
