I wonder if NASA's current problems are not due to a lack of superheroes.
I'm not trying to disparage the bravery of the Apollo astronauts. But: No. Obviously not. We've still got a lot of brave people. Ask a New York firefighter.
As the astronauts themselves would probably have hastened to point out at the time, there were half a million U.S. troops in Vietnam even as Armstrong was stepping onto the moon. Some of those troops lived with much higher stress, for much longer, than any astronaut. The same is true for many soldiers working today.
No, NASA's problem has everything to do with gravity and economics and little to do with a shortage of heroes.
Economics, in the sense of being the study of human action, sure. Gravity, only in some much weaker senses.
We've known since the Orion project how to get off the planet quickly, easily, and with a lot of cargo; the reasons we haven't done so are not primarily because of how much money it costs.
I'm not trying to disparage the bravery of the Apollo astronauts. But: No. Obviously not. We've still got a lot of brave people. Ask a New York firefighter.
As the astronauts themselves would probably have hastened to point out at the time, there were half a million U.S. troops in Vietnam even as Armstrong was stepping onto the moon. Some of those troops lived with much higher stress, for much longer, than any astronaut. The same is true for many soldiers working today.
No, NASA's problem has everything to do with gravity and economics and little to do with a shortage of heroes.