At 60, Nasa fires for the revival of the glory days of the moon – Journal

TAMPA: Sixty years ago, stimulated by competition with the Soviet Union, the United States created NASA, launching a journey that would take Americans to the moon in a decade

. overwhelming successes and failures in his efforts to push the boundaries of space exploration, including a deadly fire in 1967 that killed three and two deadly shuttle explosions in 1986 and 2003 that claimed the lives of 14 people

. itself in an increasingly crowded field of international space agencies and commercial interests, with the goal of returning to the distant space.

These bold goals make rhetoric, but experts worry that the money is not there to meet deadlines. reach the moon in the next decade and March in the 2030s.

And the inability of NASA to send astronauts into space – a capacity lost in 2011 when the space shuttle program s & # 39; 39 is over, as planned, after 30 years While US private industries are working hard on new spacecraft, NASA still has to pay Russia $ 80 million per seat for US astronauts to go to the United States. space on a Soyuz capsule.

How It Started

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite in space with Sputnik 1, while American attempts failed miserably.

The US government was already working on space, but mainly under the appearance

President Dwight D Eisenhower asked Congress to create a separate civilian space agency to better focus on the area. space exploration

It promulgated the National Aeronautics and Space Authorization Act on July 29, 1958.

NASA opened its doors in October 1958 with approximately 8,000 employees and a budget of 100 million dollars

Race to Space

The Soviets won another key part of the race Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit around the Earth.

A month later, John F Kennedy unveiled his plans to land a man on the moon at the end of the decade.

"No space project will be more impressive for humankind, or more important for long-distance exploration of space; "The Apollo Program is Born

In 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth

." The astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon.

American astronauts of the time were national heroes – military pilots with a combination of brains, courage and grime known as The Right Stuff, the classic book title of Tom Wolfe

The words of Armstrong while he was stepping on the lunar surface – "a small step for the man, a giant step for humanity" – were heard by millions of people around the world John Logsdon, professor emeritus at the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University

"Kennedy decided to use the space program as an instrument of open geopolitical competition that transformed the Nasa in one The budget of NASA was raised

NASA receives about $ 18 billion a year. Logsdon said:

New era

More than half-days of glory followed in the 1980s with the birth of NASA's shuttle program, a reusable spaceship the size of A bus that carried astronauts into space, and finally to the International Space Station, which began operating in 1998.

But what is NASA today? hui? President Donald Trump defended a return to the moon, calling for a lunar gateway that would allow a continuous spacecraft and people to visit the moon and serve as a starting point for Mars.

The creation of a "Space Force", a sixth branch of the military that would focus on defending US interests.

NASA has long been considered a world leader in space innovation, but today the international field is much more populated than a few years ago.

"Now you have something like 70 countries that are in one way or another involved in space activity," says Logsdon

. Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator at the National Museum of Air and Space

"How can NASA benefit?"

Jim Bridenstine, NASA Administrator, said recently He mentioned the possibility of strengthening cooperation with China, and how he recently traveled to Israel to meet business interests working on a lunar lander.

Bridenstine says that the reason for his visit was "how do you do that, what are you doing and can Nasa benefit?"

NASA recedes from the low Earth orbit, In 2024, the company hoped to hand over the space station to commercial interests and spend millions of dollars in seed capital to help private companies like SpaceX and Boeing to build capsules to transport humans in space in years to come. What NASA does, compared to what it buys as a service from commercial suppliers, will be "one of the fundamental challenges that I will have to face during my tenure".

Bridenstine said that Trump's budget demands were "very generous". NASA plans to spend about $ 10 billion of its nearly $ 20 billion budget on lunar exploration in 2019.

Bridenstine's predecessor at the helm of NASA, retired astronaut Charles Bolden warned against the repeated mistakes of the era of the shuttle, when the United States ended their human exploration program without another spacecraft ready to take its place

. . "It is really essential for NASA to facilitate the success of commercial entities to take over" in low Earth orbit, some 400 kilometers above the planet.

"And then for NASA to do what it does so well … Be the leader of the lunar orbit."

Posted in Dawn, July 28, 2018