To Go Where No Man Has Gone Before

For John, BLUF:  We need to be a Space Faring nation.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

---

From the Drudge Report there was a link to a Yahoo News Report (Agence France-Presse) article "Erdogan says Muslims, not Columbus, discovered Americas".

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that the Americas were discovered by Muslims in the 12th century, nearly three centuries before Christopher Columbus set foot there.

Totally believable.  And the Vikings may have been here even earlier, although not Cuba, as with the Muslims (which Muslims?), but Newfoundland.  Apparently the Muslims never went back and the Little Ice Age squeezed out the Vikings.♠

Then there is Zheng He, (China's early Ming Dynasty), who commanded expeditionary voyages to the Middle East, and East Africa, from 1405 to 1433.♥  Then the Chinese shut down the operation and dismantled the shipyards.

Now we have the European Union landing on a comet, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

We have China working on a Mars Rover.

And, as Scientist Paul D. Spudis wrote on 6 November, "China is Now Positioned to Dominate the Moon".

In the mean time we here in the US are going to the International Space Station on a rented rocket.

It is time for the United States to get serious about space, because space is the place, the place of our future.  Science fiction has told us this, but now is the time for us to act on these dreams.  Otherwise we will end up like the Vikings, Muslims and the Chinese 500 to 1,000 years ago.  They ventured out and then chickened out, or were frozen out.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  There are cases for the Irish coming to the Western Hemisphere, in the Sixth Century.  Then there is the theory that "Europeans" showed up in the Delmarva Peninsula before later Native Americans crossed the Bering Sea.
♥  From Wikipedia we have these descriptions of the ships being operated by Zheng He.  For comparison Columbus' SANTA MARIA had a length of 62 ft and a beam of 18 ft.

• "Chinese treasure ships" (宝船, Bǎo Chuán), used by the commander of the fleet and his deputies (nine-masted, about 417 feet long and 171 feet wide).
• Equine ships (馬船, Mǎ Chuán), carrying horses and tribute goods and repair material for the fleet (eight-masted, about 338 ft long and 138 ft wide).
• Supply ships (粮船, Liáng Chuán), containing staple for the crew (seven-masted, about 256 ft long and 115 ft wide).
• Troop transports (兵船, Bīng Chuán), six-masted, about 220 ft long and 82 ft wide.