Yeah, but we'll end up with cheap Star Wars knock off friends named Ookla The Mok and Princess Ariel and drive busted up dune buggies!!
How cool would it be if it passed between us and the moon, and its gravitational pull caused the moon to smack into us??
Not to mention the earthquakes, floods, etc due to the Earth reshaping itself without the moon's gravitational pull. The moon is a part of our existence. We would not be here without it.
That's funny some friends of mine were talking about Cthulu this weekend because one of them has a plush Cthulu stuffed animal.
Lets not forget Space 1999 that was about the Moon pulling free of Earth Orbit and drifting out into the galaxy.
I'll spare everyone my speech about how we need to be in space, in a big way, so we could maybe save ourselves from an asteroid or comet strike, and the resulting devastation that could be a very possible result, when one hits our beautiful planet. Nope, won't say a word!
I'll spare everyone, too, because i entirely agree. Watched a show called Mega Disasters last night about a meteor hitting off the coast of california. Talked about the one that wiped out the dinosaurs...and the kind of worldwide destruction it would cause.
It sucks, but it just isn't possible to count on government-backed space exploration anymore. It's a political loser in every sense. The hype and joy surrounding the moon launches is all but gone. People want tangible results and sending probes to saturn just doesn't cut it anymore. (even if that probe is testing a new nuclear propulsion engine that could very well replace the space shuttle engine) Government space exploration is slow and way too inefficient. Space Shuttle technology is way way too far behind and the impetus for change is non-existant and it is topped off by a bureaucracy that makes efficient upgrades virtually impossible. In addition, NASA is at the mercy of defense contractors that are pandered to by politicians. It's a nightmare situation. Hopefully, two things will push things along. 1) China keeps pushing us by aggressively attempting to go to the Moon and thus would force the US to put more money into tangible space exploration. Russia is falling apart and simply is maintaining an aging fleet rather than attempting to do anything new and 2) Private industry continues to develop. Burt Rutan's spacecraft is only the start but the technology it uses is already revolutionary and something NASA's slow as molasses development couldn't make. Hopefully, nuts like Richard Branson continue to pour money into private research because that will also push the NASA as well to respond. As bad as NASA is, I've got high hopes that things will get better. Competition in this case is a damn good thing and now we've got some for NASA.
"As Wednesday morning dawned, northern Norway was hit with a meteorite impact comparable to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima." http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1346411.ece
