COMMENT:

"Name one thing that has come from "space exploration" that we couldn't do without. Tang?"

You probably misunderstood.

Well, many did.

Background of the problem:

Sweeney had the devil of a time during his bombing run. Nagasaki was his secondary target, and he had reluctantly headed for it when he could find no break in the cloud cover over his primary target of Kokura. When he reached Nagasaki, and finally found a brief opportunity to drop "Fat Man," because of where it was released, it ended up detonating over the industrial heart of the city, instead of the vast, sprawling suburbs. These suburbs happened to be separated from the industrial heart of the city by hills and valleys.

Even though "Fat Man," a plutonium device, was about twice as powerful as the uranium 235 bomb that had completely destroyed Hiroshima three days before--"Fat Man's" detonation only yielded about half as many casualties.

You see, for a nuclear weapon to be a credible deterrent, it must be understood that the bomb will be placed at a precise, predetermined location.

The German V2 had proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a warhead-tipped ballistic missile could defeat any anti-aircraft defense anyone could devise. A fleet of fighters planes, indeed even fighter jets, and concentric circles of the most powerful antiaircraft cannons ever developed could not stop a V2 from dropping its payload. And it could do so with with no more than a few seconds warning.

Where a bomber could not get through, a V2 could. It had proved unstoppable during the war.

But V2s weren't accurate at the relatively short range from Peenemünde to London. The problem was vastly more formidable at a distance like that between Washington and Moscow, for instance.

And that fact reveals the value of space exploration.

In 1957, the Soviet Union put up a small radio emitting satellite into low earth orbit with their version of the new, improved V2 rocket. Sputnik orbited the earth in such a way that it traveled over nearly every major city on the globe before its batteries died and its elliptical orbit decayed and brought it back to the surface. People in New York and Virginia, et al, looked up at the sky in terror as Londoners had just 12 years before.

But the Soviets did not demonstrate they could bring Sputnik down at a precise, predetermined location. Their V2s were not credible threats yet.

The Soviets needed to demonstrate that they could put up a Sputnik, and drop it directly over the Washington Monument. America needed to prove they could launch a V2 into orbit and drop it over Red Square.

The race was on.

America, being populated by the greatest marketers the world had ever produced (think Kellogg's Cereal, Elvis and the Beatles here), decided to beat the Soviets by winning the Hearts and Minds of the world. The USSR made no pretense: their space program was run entirely by their military. The US decided to pretend that its own "space program" was a non-military civilian venture.

NASA was born.

Never mind that NASA inherited its missile technology program from the classified military program. Never mind that all of America's astronauts were Air Force officers.

It was still sold as a civilian-government venture. And lots of people bought it.

Heh.

But its primary goal was to show that it could launch a missile into orbit, and bring down a payload at a precise location. By 1961, the US was beginning to demonstrate success. Allan Shepard completed one orbit of the earth. John Glenn orbited the earth 3 times in 1962. But when their capsules splashed down it was only within about 50 miles of target.

But we and the Soviets were getting closer.

John Kennedy, a consummate Cold Warrior, began to think of the Moon as the "ultimate high ground."

The idea of putting up orbiting missile platforms was thought to be the Checkmate move in the race for effective nuclear weapons delivery systems.

The problem with orbiting platforms was they were just too damned provocative. There was just no way to put one up in orbit and pretend it was for a peaceful or benign purpose. We would never allow the Soviets to put up a missile platform over us, and likewise, they would be willing to go to war if we ever tried to put one up over them.

Hence, the Moon.

The Moon isn't in geosynchronous orbit over earth, but it is tidal locked. Moscow slides underneath of it once every day. Whoever got to the Moon first could then threaten to build or secretly build a missile base, and achieve the same checkmate that an orbiting missile platform would achieve.

This was Kennedy's aim, and this was the urgency behind the project.

The problem was, just as Neil Armstrong was misspeaking the most famous sentence ever uttered from the surface of the Moon, the defense department contractors had perfected the solid rocket fuel Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. Suddenly, the US could launch a low maintenance missile from a silo in Iowa, and it could drop its payload over Red Square about 30 minutes later.

The problem with the Moon is it's really, really, really far away. 250,000 miles.

Most people think of the relationship between the earth and the moon as this:

O__o

In reality, it is more like this:

O___0

It takes days to go that far.

30 minutes, 1 1/2 days. It was a no brainer. We didn't need missile bases on the Moon anymore.

So, to the dismay of everyone who had bought into the marketing that made everyone believe NASA was a cross between Queen Isabella, Lewis & Clark and Sir Edmund Hillary, the astronauts played a couple of rounds of golf on he Moon, and then left, never to return.

You're right that there's nothing of value on the Moon.

But there are other reasons for exploring space and improving rocket technology.

The greatest goal within our reach today is SBSP, of course. SBSP is the very essence and sine qua non of man's future.

But there are many other reasons as well.

They were looking for a direct route to India, and found oh so much more back in 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

It's not a waste of time. It never has been, even with our shifting priorities, needs and goals as a people and a nation.

Men will continue to venture into space whether you think it's a waste of time and resources or not.

And it's not.

But it's never going to be what you expected.