Sunday, September 28, 2008

Space!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUOBLX55h4s

Other than some VERY minor environmentalist undertones in a couple parts about why we need to go to space, this talk is really great.

4 comments:

Caleb said...

I don't have time to watch it now, but I will later.

I love space. I want to take advantage of every possible opportunity to explore every corner of it that we can.

I think the $700B bailout bill might put a hold on NASA's moon and Mars plans, actually. That would be a shame.

Luke Murphy said...

Well Peter Diamandis thinks it's going to be private industry that gets this stuff going.

I would be interested in being a NASA astronaut except that I don't really want to blow up.

Penn and Teller have a decent BS episode about NASA, which they said was very difficult for them to make because even though they don't think NASA should exist, they really love what it does.

Caleb said...

Yeah...I don't know if space exploration should be the government's realm or not, and I'm all for whatever private companies want to get up there. However, they haven't done it (regularly and successfully) yet. I mean, is there really any money in it? The "pay $50,000 for a 15 minute celebrity space flight" thing didn't really pan out. How do you profit from being the first to land on Mars?

Given their remarkable level of success so far, I have no problem with NASA. If a private entity wanted to get it on it that'd be great, but I don't know if I see that happening.

Luke Murphy said...

Well you may think a little differently of private companies' prospects after you watch the video. And I think NASA is going to be shuttleless in about 2 or 3 years? They did some amazing things 40 years ago, but I think the organization has really descended into bureaucratic incompetency since.