![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(no subject)
When my grandparents were children, centuries of war in Europe culminated in the "War To End All Wars." Less than a decade before my parents were born, the Second World War ended when the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, killing thousands of civilians and poisoning the land for millennia to come. When I was growing up, the US and Russia were locked in a Cold War that threatened to destroy all life on Earth when the slightest misstep upset the delicate balance between the "super powers."
A few years before my oldest niece was born, the US, Russia, the European Union, and Japan came together in an unprecedented show of cooperation to build the International Space Station.
It still amazes me, for so many reasons. The bitter enemies of the past three generations (and more) working together to build something in the space above us all dedicated to peaceful cooperation and scientific research and advancement. It's the largest manmade structure in space, and if you know where and when to look you can see it fly through the night sky, bright as a star, with your naked eye.
Just stop for a minute and think about all that. It's awe-inspiring.
On to politics:
The ISS is the size a football field, took nearly 13 years to complete (begun in 1998, the last module was added just last year), houses a regular crew of 6, orbits Earth at less than 400km, and requires food and other supplies to be shipped up every few months.
Newt Gingrich wants to build a colony on the Moon in less than 8 years, housing thousands of people, without international help. The Moon's orbit is closer to 400,000km above us. A thousand times further than the ISS.That makes it far more difficult and far more expensive to send anything there (whether it be construction modules, people, or supplies).
Also, Gingrich wants it to be a purely American colony. Forget the huge step forward in peaceful international relations and scientific cooperation. Forget that we agreed that Antarctica (never mind the Moon) should be beyond the claims and petty rivalries of any country. We're going to make the Moon part of America. Screw everyone else, we're America and we're awesome and we're going to do it ourselves and claim the entire Moon as ours.
Think about that.
Okay, politics over. Here's NASA's page about the ISS. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
It's got all sorts of stuff. Live video from the station, videos of cool and important things that happened on the station, scientific research, an animation of how the station was assembled, and much more.
A few years before my oldest niece was born, the US, Russia, the European Union, and Japan came together in an unprecedented show of cooperation to build the International Space Station.
It still amazes me, for so many reasons. The bitter enemies of the past three generations (and more) working together to build something in the space above us all dedicated to peaceful cooperation and scientific research and advancement. It's the largest manmade structure in space, and if you know where and when to look you can see it fly through the night sky, bright as a star, with your naked eye.
Just stop for a minute and think about all that. It's awe-inspiring.
On to politics:
The ISS is the size a football field, took nearly 13 years to complete (begun in 1998, the last module was added just last year), houses a regular crew of 6, orbits Earth at less than 400km, and requires food and other supplies to be shipped up every few months.
Newt Gingrich wants to build a colony on the Moon in less than 8 years, housing thousands of people, without international help. The Moon's orbit is closer to 400,000km above us. A thousand times further than the ISS.That makes it far more difficult and far more expensive to send anything there (whether it be construction modules, people, or supplies).
Also, Gingrich wants it to be a purely American colony. Forget the huge step forward in peaceful international relations and scientific cooperation. Forget that we agreed that Antarctica (never mind the Moon) should be beyond the claims and petty rivalries of any country. We're going to make the Moon part of America. Screw everyone else, we're America and we're awesome and we're going to do it ourselves and claim the entire Moon as ours.
Think about that.
Okay, politics over. Here's NASA's page about the ISS. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
It's got all sorts of stuff. Live video from the station, videos of cool and important things that happened on the station, scientific research, an animation of how the station was assembled, and much more.