Earth to the Moon

"Houston, Tranquility Base here; the Eagle has landed"

Had a more stirring phrase been uttered before? If you are near my age you remember this like it was yesterday.

And if you were me you would know this excruciating bit of trivia: the command module Columbia was named in an homage to the Columbiad cannon used to shoot men to the moon in Jules Verne's classic From the Earth to the Moon.

We won the space race, but to what end? One could have conjectured that - based on plotting a graph of progress over the years - that we'd have colonies on Mars by now. There are those who say we have enough "issues" to spend money on here on earth; why should we go to space. Probably the best answer is resources. Asteroids provide an enormous amount of metals for potentially a lower cost than mining on earth. And an ice asteroid can provide almost limitless amounts of water.

My only hope is that we return to the moon and establish bases there and on Mars. One thing to remember is that someday a large asteroid will be on a collision course with earth. Only a group like NASA could try to develop something like the atom-bomb-powered Orion spacecraft.

-- Post From My iPhone