He had vision and I think he would have supported Bigelow, SpaceX and others to start down the path to his vision. He had the mind of an entrepreneur with a scientist’s budget.

The governement proved it couldn’t do affordable LEO with the Shuttle as promised. In order to have an affordable base on the moon, we will need affordable access to LEO. We need to leave Apollo behind and depend on the commercial industry we’ve already created including the new entrepreneurs..

The Bush on Steroids program is a different kettle of fish. It was and is spending billions of real tax dollars, on real hardware. Yet it never even attempted a serious economic analysis. Other than some surface geology that could be done more cheaply by robotics , there is no scientific or economic justification at all, and even the science is obviously added on with a “we’re going to the moon, so what can we do to keep busy” rationale.

The only real justification of Constellation is implied geopolitical value as a replay of Apollo. I have met NASA personnel who truly believe that Constellation is a vital assertion of American leadership in the world. But this is based on an astonishingly naive, almost childlike worldview. Kennedy was dealing with a conflict of ideologies that had placed us on the brink of Armageddon, but was at its core a game of appealing to the nonaligned countries with abstract ideas. He had a limited number of cards and played them well. Obama is faced with a world that really has accepted American capitalism and is locked in hell-for-leather competition. Constellation is like leaving the table during a championship poker game and taking a vacation on borrowed money.

Why bother when, if we want a “good laugh,” we can just read your moronic and ignorant posts here?

“Which pretty much negates any rational commentary you may post on them”

You, pal, are just a grain of sand on Sagan’s beach, and your personal opinions don’t carry much weight in this world. Stick to what you know, which is reading moldy Apollo history books and watching “Destination Moon”.

“I didn’t watch much of Sagan’s stuff, nor did I read O’Neill’s book.”

Which pretty much negates any rational commentary you may post on them– particularly O’Neill, whose grandiose, disconnected proposals in the face of the technical and budgetary realities of his time bordered on the absurd.

@John Malkin wrote @ October 31st, 2011 at 11:08 am

O’Neill’s proposals were wildly unrealistic for the technologies and budgets available. Ivory tower. Maybe you should revisit what he was hyping in the 70s and 80s– then have a good laugh.

“O’Neill was as goofy as Sagan. O’Neill made some wildly absurd proposals on Nightline back in 1989…”

Gosh, he proffered a “vision” that Cernan disagreed with, and that wipes out all the other things that he did for space advocacy?

Cernan was a good pilot and engineer, but other than winning the lottery for being the last person on the Moon, did he personally create the level of excitement for space that O’Neill did?

I didn’t watch much of Sagan’s stuff, nor did I read O’Neill’s book, but I do know that both were a positive influence on a whole generation of people that wanted to move out into space. I guess you see that as bad?

Maybe you’re just envious because they are public figures in the space community and you’re not, but you’re just going to have to man up and get over that because the stuff you write is truly the standard for goofy…

Well most uneducated people call scientists goofy. Why don’t you read up on him because you obviously didn’t do any research.

Did you know his office was next to Einstein’s office and they use to talk in great length about physics? I’m sure they were intelligent conversations. Do you depend on TV news shows for all your perspectives? Why don’t you read a copy of “The High Frontier”? I have an autographed copy if you would like to read it.

“I wish Gerard O’Neill was still alive…”

O’Neill was as goofy as Sagan. O’Neill made some wildly absurd proposals on Nightline back in 1989 on a broadcast about the 20th anniversary of the moon landing and what we could expect by 2000 and Gene Cernan politely brought him back to Earth with the realities of what was possible and affordable– the ol’ ‘they don’t know what they don’t know yet’ pitch was accurate even then.