Where's My Moon? Where is USAService.org?

The guy only invokes Apollo when it serves his agenda. He will never invoke Apollo in regards to NASA.

NASA's "moon" is the moon. Strangely enough. LOL

I was just about to say the same thing. But, its not just him every politician since Apollo. If we can do that we can do anything, Except do that again.Apollo is NASA's greatest accomplishment and its 1000 lb gorilla in the room.I think its odd they talked about how inspiring it was and in the same breath dismiss ever going back because we have already been there. So it was the greatest feat in human history and also not a very big deal? The Hypocrisy of politics, such is life.

Just because the Space race gave them a great moment to pontificate on doesn't mean they have any interest in generating new moments of greatness once elected.
Such events take a great investment of political capitol and vision. It costs so much to become the president these days that every hour has been bought and paid for by one lobbyist or another, each with far more terrestrial concerns.

I think the problem though is that the challenge of going to the Moon, when no one had done it before, was spectacular - but that it's qualitatively different from the goal of going back after we did 6 times. This is why Apollo got run down so quickly after Apollo 11 - it had always been spun as the challenge of getting there, and the extra special challenge of doing it before the Soviet Union. Only secondarily, and belatedly, were rationales such as our doing it to learn something about the moon - or what we might benefit from the moon - kicked in. This is always the danger of the engineering challenge rationale for doing something - the project is over when you first do it. The real challenge if we want a sustained program is to base it around a rationale where the challenge of accomplishing any given engineering feat is only the subtext - the means to the end. We face this even in the SMD side of NASA where JPL is often much more interested in the delivery mechanism than the actual scientific payback - in this case even in the *science* mission directorate the actual point gets lost. For the vastly more expensive human side, a rationale much more potent than a "flag and footprint" will be needed - but I guess that's what's been struggled with over and over since the demise of Apollo.

If you're listening carefully rather than cherry-picking phrases and sniping, you'll see these are given as examples of past accomplishments of large groups of Americans working together. *Obviously*, "my moon, my levee, my dream" refers to the Apollo program, defending the levees during floods, and the civil rights movement. Does this ad suggest we should go into national service so we can *repeat* all three? Of course not.

This is known as metaphorical language. There are other challenges in front of us. "My moon" is a any great technical feat that hasn't been accomplished, that expands our view of our place in the world and the universe. To me that might mean hotels in orbit, moon rovers you could launch for $500k, supply depots at Earth-Moon L1, ISRU on NEOs, and eventually HSF to Mars.

It's unfortunate and silly that the old URL points to an old product store. If someone would wake up and notice, it would be easy to point it somewhere more sensible, like the Peace Corps or Americorps. In the meantime, it means nothing, and deserves no attention. Gripe about something real.

Try http://www.usaservices.gov/

Thank you Keith for posting this. This blog is a great service and I appreciate the objectivity. I guess not everyone in the media is oblivious to the obvious.

Obama first announced position for manned space was very muted, as proven with his first nominee for NASA admin who had zilch HSF experience. But when he realized he needed the Florida votes he changed his tune. I still swear that if Constellation was initiated by anyone BUT George Bush he would still go along with the program.

Nope, thats not it, there is a big difference between "service" and "services".

http://www.usaservices.gov is a intergovernmental site for web page services.

see http://www.usaservices.gov/websiteservices/index.php

Sites move, learn to Google
http://www.serve.gov/

@Aerin

The ad clearly shows USAService.org. Its a erroneous, ridiculous and shows a distinct lack of seriousness on the part of the Obama administration.

Perhaps you could volunteer to help the AdCouncil and the current administration with consistency.