Where are those 9-10 people the graph shows for 2010???? Which "world" are they walking on right now? Because I'm sure as hell there are no Moon missions going on.

Oh, nevermind, I get it. It's the same astronauts, who are still alive today and been on the Moon.

If you took the same 'slice' of the time of the colonization of America...

and applied it as this chart...

You would find that the same was true of the number of Europeans that had walked upon the soil of the Americas.

Yet look at us now.

Time is a pool.

One can look at the ripples...

Or one can look at the whole pond and see the patterns in the water.

Sad.

You can never step into the same pool twice.

There is another chart which shows the number of farm animals ever shot up to orbit.

Incidentally: this is NOT a joke. Anyone know if it's worth to investigate how much a couple of European-made HALLWAG maps would fetch today, which were printed a couple of years before the first moon landing, and one shows the moon's face, not the other side (no ship had been sent there yet) on a scale of 1:5,000,000, and the other map shows the sketches of the rocketships in comparable sizes, and astronauts' names and number of orbits for all manned space missions to that time? Russkies included.

You can never sit in the same carpool twice.

In a speech given at the Kennedy Space Center last month, President Obama reaffirmed his administration’s decision to cancel Constellation, NASA’s program to create new vehicles for human flights to the moon and Mars. If implemented, this decision will guarantee a decade of non-achievement by NASA’s human spaceflight program, at a cost of more than $100 billion.

Although we are known for holding different opinions on the order and importance of specific objectives in space, we are united in our concern over this move to turn away from the Vision for Space Exploration (hereafter referred to as Vision). Vision gave NASA’s human spaceflight program a clear direction: to reach the moon and Mars. Congressional authorization bills in 2005 (under Republican leadership) and 2008 (under Democratic leadership) endorsed this goal.

The agency created the Constellation program to build the Ares 1 and Ares 5 launch vehicles, the Orion spacecraft and other hardware needed to go to the moon and Mars. A timeline was set, and objectives were articulated to achieve Vision’s first major milestone - a sustainable return to the moon by the end of the present decade to gain knowledge, reacquire operational experience and use local resources to create capabilities for our reach to Mars and beyond.

Vision had its roots in the 2003 report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which asserted that the goals associated with human spaceflight must be worthy of its costs and risks. In canceling Constellation and Vision, the administration is proposing to return NASA to its pre-Columbia template of operating on a “flexible path” involving no commitment to any specific timeline, achievement or objective. This new direction, coming just as the space-shuttle program is set to end, threatens America’s human spaceflight effort not merely with stagnation but also with cancellation.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/31/nasas-mission-to-nowhere/

maybe we just can't afford it right now

ya yanno I just took a pay cut and put juicy couture sweats on hold

kinda the same thing

It's not really the same thing. He canceled projects we have already heavily invested in and shifted all the manned spaceflight funds to other pet projects.

OK OK gimme a girly moment

OK, what manned space flights?

as far as projects we have heavily invested in...if we don't have the money for them I do not how that matter?????

If you cancel a project like Orion or Constellation which is the next generation spacecraft when it is 90% complete, you've wasted a lot of money and stopped the infrastructure it took a long time to build. If you read the article you'll note the cost of cancellation is 100 billion.

Go down to the auto repair place and tell them you want your engine rebuilt on your car. Wait til it is 90% finished and then tell them to stop and see how well you come out overall financially. You will be on foot with nothing in the future... just like our manned space program.

Methinks there is nothing a US administration can do without it costing 100 billion dollars.

It can stand still, it can run, it can jump, and the price of that to the taxpayer will keep on increasing.

That is not tied at all to who is in power.

What I actually meant to say is if they did not cancel the man-carrying spacecraft projects, at a price of 100 billion dollars, then they would have needed to cancel other project(s) that have also had 100 billion dollars already invested in them, such as the war against drugs, or the war against terror, or the war against literacy and numeracy.

Here is the future of human spaceflight ... as of December 2008.

http://web.mit.edu/mitsps/MITFutureofHumanSpaceflight.pdf

yea it is, we are too busy stepping on other countries heads to spend time and money stepping on worlds.

Comments of Obama's space plan as of May 2011 by Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, and others to Congress.


...

"Armstrong acknowledged that the Bush space blueprint had not been adequately funded. But he said waiting for the private aerospace industry to develop low-earth-orbit spacecraft would result in limiting the United States to buying passage to the space station from Russia.

He said the Obama plan was "contrived by a very small group in secret" who persuaded the president that this was the way to put his stamp on the space program. "I believe the president was poorly advised," he said.

Cernan was even harsher in his criticisms, predicting it will take as long as a decade for the private sector to access low Earth orbit safely. Obama's space budget projects either show extreme naivete or a willingness to accept a "plan to dismantle America's leadership in the world of human space exploration," he said.

Holdren said the plan was devised after an extensive and open process. It was based on findings of the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, also known as the Augustine Committee, which had six public meetings.

Cernan said NASA administrator Charles Bolden warned in a briefing last week the failure of the private sector to provide spacecraft in a timely way could result in a bailout equal to that given the auto industry." ...

NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126775979

I know everyone will probably disagree with me but I really like the space shuttles. I believe they could have been updated with more sophisticated technology to allow us to fly even further out in space. Maybe even to Mars. One small step for man....one giant leap for mankind. Imagine that being said on Mars if possible!

These pioneer astronauts even mentioned that we should have been on Mars by now. Our space program has gone way to slow because of the constant approvals, regulations, and fundings in getting them going. It is because we as a people can't agree on basic fundamentals of life either making our governments at loss with their budget. It is a sad story for I really believe the US could have still led in alot more then just landing on the moon and taking a few pictures of the planets in our universe.

I wish we could have voted as a people to keep the space shuttle and just updated it with more technology. I think that the people would have voted for it to stay with us and not store the thing in a museum for memories.

If I am off subject then I apologize to the OP. I am very new with space programs and how they work.

NASA has had a problem with "vision". Bush, set a goal for Mars, but apparently Obama changes the plan to erase the legacy of his predecessor and leave his own mark on history. I am not sure killing the NASA manned space program will leave the kind of legacy for which Obama wants to be remembered. The manned spaceflight budget was only about 7 billion a year. This amount is spent every twenty days in Iraq. Obama did not "save" the money which was being spent on manned spaceflight. He shifted it to inner city projects.

The shuttle is somewhat of a space "truck". It is designed to carry large heavy loads to low orbit. It is really not suitable for flight into the solar system but that doesn't mean it is impossible. It certainly won't fly from the four museums. The true value of the shuttle would be to "shuttle" large pieces of a spacecraft into orbit that was suitable to travel farther in space. There have been designs on the boards, for example, of ships with nuclear engines that cannot lift themselves from Earth's gravity but could fly quite well in the zero gravity of space for very long journeys.

A new engine which uses plasma for thrust holds much promise. However, the time delay in having the loss of a manned spaceflight program will kill the infrastructure leaving the US in a "start all over" position in several years ... if ever.

http://www.physorg.com/news174031552.html