NOW GET THIS STRAIGHT, MOON! This Is NOT Goodbye!

Yes, we know we had beautiful plans to return and stay and learn from you. The plans were ample, but the funds were anemic! So now we are being forced to skitter around a bunch of asteroids when we could be gaining valuable lessons by being with you. Yes, we are discouraged but not defeated. There is so much you have to offer, and there is so much we need to learn from you before we dash off to Mars. In fact, the last thing we need to do is dash anywhere. Dashing usually leads to big pratfalls where nobody laughs. We don't need that.

Right now, one of our most valuable assets; our engineering skills and innovation, are being more misdirected than directed. We are flexible and can easily take all the good stuff we have already developed in our Moon program and mix it up, and come out with a realistic solution that will save money and make exploration progress. To get to this we need to have scientists and engineers deciding our program, not politicians and the appointees who listen with their wallets instead of their brains and hearts.To get started we need to speak out now in these few remaining days. We must do this before we elect more wallet-eared politicians who have little or no vision. Vision is all that can carry us forward and bring us back to greater economic and social strength. We must NOT take NO for an answer.

Yep, this is a political commentary and the spirits of every explorer throughout history who has had to reckon with the same stammering politics that never serve anyone but the politicians are at our side. Our goals are to serve all of us, and we cannot do that unless we first graduate from your school. Some see this as a delay, we see it as the NEXT STEP FORWARD. It is a vital step and to ignore it or try to move around it can set us back not ahead.

We are like energy, locked in useless vibrations, that is really going nowhere. To break free, we must come together with a strong loyalty to space exploration and our Moon program as the next best move forward. With the advances in propulsion systems chafing at the bit, we need to extend their development so that our travels from LEO to you are only an hour or two away.  This proximity insures that the exchange of data, researchers and new development between the Moon and Earth is realistic and timely. All of this sharpens our readiness for our visits to more distant planetary bodies; including Mars.  It also means that our commercial space friends have a solid set of goals to achieve and sustain that will more quickly enable all of our current space exploration goals and begin the building of a new space economy.

So Moon, we have not forgotten you. WE WILL BE BACK! The harder we work at making this happen the sooner it will happen. Meanwhile, be courteous to your Chinese, Indian, and Russian visitors as they too see your great value to all our space futures.

CREDIT:
Moon close up image taken from total astrophotograph by Waddell Robey (c) Waddell Robey and Slooh,com