THIS USED TO BE THE FUTURE: Mars, 1960s-style

>>t seems America is becoming the Spain of the modern world--a superpower who wound up squandering its potential and letting other powers overtake it.<<

No we are more like the late Romans we are just tired and fighting to keep what we got instead of expanding. 9/11 interrupted the beginning of the contraction before we were attacked Bush was planning on reducing our military footprint in Europe and Japan. The whole global strike concept was so we could leave our forward bases and still be able to hit targets globally from the 48 states Hawaii and Guam would be the Navy's forward bases to replace Japan and the Philippines.

The far right has dreamed of building fortress America since the end of World War II so we could tell the rest of the world to stuff it. First the Cold War then 9/11 had stopped this plan but if a vote on pulling our troops back to US soil and telling the world your on your own it would win overwhelmingly. Even we sometimes forget that we never wanted to be a superpower America has always just wanted to be left alone. It was western Europe and Japan that insisted that we had to defend them so they would not start another world war.

Our one foray into imperialism after the Spanish American War ended with us being in the middle of giving the Philippines it's independence when the Japanese attacked us. It took us telling the Europeans in the 50's that we would not support there colonies that made them give up there empires and it still took till the 60's for them to free them all.

The space program and other big science projects by the US government are artifacts of the Cold War. All the great American inventions from lighting rods and iron clad ships to heavier than air aircraft have been private inventors working in there basements or companies looking for new products not the government.

If we go back to private companies doing space in the USA then we are just returning to our roots now all we have to do is get the government to kick the drug of control that it got hooked on after WWII.

It seems America is becoming the Spain of the modern world--a superpower who wound up squandering its potential and letting other powers overtake it.

And that's the optimistic way of looking at it. There's also the potential that we'll be like the vikings. The Spanish at least managed to leave a legacy in the form of a few colonies, even if they were ultimately overshadowed by the English. Like the vikings, though, we're not even leaving that; we're just leaving behind a few trinkets that only prove we made it.

Good luck to China, I guess.

After Apollo NASA became a jobs program mostly for southern states. In fact because of LBJ's influence Apollo was chosen for the first Moon landing over a Lander based on the Gemini because the Gemini system would not have been built in the south.

LBJ used NASA to jump start a high tech industry in the southern states. That is why many NASA installations were built in the south. It helped that Von Braun was working out of the Army Missile test center in Huntsville Alabama.

After Apollo was canceled NASA has been used to bring jobs to Texas, Florida and other states that effect national elections. Think about it American launch sites are in mostly Florida and California but the boosters are built in Colorado, Alabama and Utah. This makes no sense since it costs millions of dollars extra to ship these large rockets to the launch sites.

Two things happened to kill Mars for the US public the environmental movement (The Earth Mother Cult) and NASA announcing that Mars is a dead rock. When NASA using the Mariner probes data said that Mars was dead that is the moment when the American people lost interest in space.

You are right R3 we should have done it in the 70's when we still had Saturn boosters and a cadre of real astronauts and space engineers. Now people are afraid to leave there comfy homes and spend money on things that don't directly effect their happiness.