military space ambitions
Does
this article on Air Force space plans sound familiar? Some other studies are available
here.
around the blogs
Jeff discusses an article in the Tiger and says politicians use the space program to get votes. Kennedy didn't decide to go to the moon until after he was elected, but he certainly used claims of a missile gap in the campaign. But do you think these days proposing an expanded space program gets you many votes?
Kacy has some other thoughts on politics.
Jamel has interesting information on funding issues for Bush's space plan.
Joseph found a source for an explanation of the film
2001, if you are wishing for one.
Nick would have preferred to watch a movie that was more historical. I admit
2001 is a weird movie, but what interests me, historically, is how people thought the space age was going to transform the world. So far it has turned out to be a lot more mundane than expected.
Mars blogging
A detailed blog on the Mars results is
here.
NASA History Office
The
NASA History Office has lots of useful resources, including lots of
complete books available online. I just got an announcement for the newest one:
Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950-2000. by David S. F. Portree (NASA SP-2001-4521). This is the full pdf version of monograph 21 with all the graphics and the text search feature. It is at
http://history.nasa.gov/monograph21.pdf.
