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Very short sighted ....

Agreed. If we take him back to 1500, I can see him writing about the follies of New World exploration. "That Columbus guy has rocks in his head and he will be eaten by sea monsters and Queen Isabella is a bigger sucker by throwing her money down a rathole."

Bring him to 1800, "we will never be about to go faster than 25 MPH, if we do, people will suffocate due to the force on the backs from the vehicle so it is a waste to use a steam engine to make a carriage to go fast on a road or set of rails."

1900, well, "man will never fly in a heavier than air aircraft. Those stupid Wright, well actually 'Wrong' Brothers will never get their airplane to fly. The materials are too dense and man himself has dense bones, he will never fly. Anyways if they tried, he will crash."
1940, "Airplanes will never break the sound barrier. We do fine with air travel zooming along at the speeds of 150 MPH and soon might be able to do 350 MPH, but faster than the speed of sound, the plane will crack up."

1948, "Space Travel? Bah!!!! Man isn't meant for space, the weighlessness will kill him, not to mention radiation and God knows what else. Going to the Moon, well, it will take so much stuff to get into orbit, it will be a waste of time and money even if it is doable. Maybe one day, we will make it to the Moon, but not for 100 years at least."

I know there are problems we have to overcome even today but if we take that attitude, we be all Freepin' in our caves by painting pictures on our walls, banging rocks to communicate as well as using smoke signals. If you ask me, I think maybe you can get a half decent bandwidth banging rocks together although the range will suck, but smoke signals are so slow. B-)

I have decided to join the protest against sending a beam of light around the world to honor Einstein Year next year. This project would involve 100,000 people and take quite a bit of time, but would also encourage the young to ignore the effects of light pollution of the night sky. We should be more environmentally conscious. Don't smoke, chew.

In the great tradition of explorers past, wouldn't it make sense to send a scout first, to bare the brunt of the risks. A scout who could send back HDTV and IMAX videos of the new world to wow and rally the masses, for what will certainly be a much more expensive, risky and difficult mission of sending humans there. All we have managed to put on Mars so far is a Tonka toy.

I mean, don't we have to sell this kind of enterprise, one that costs so much, will take so long, and has few tangible benefits to the tax payers who will be bank rolling it? Don't they have to buy in to this? I've seen the Mars exploration simulations, but they are cartoonish and make believe. Nothing beats the real thing.

I'm all for manned space exploration. In fact, I think we should be looking for habitable planets in other solar systems to travel too. But unless you have a blank check from the government, you're going to have to sell it. And robotic HDTV and IMAX cameras are the best way to do that, by taking the financiers, the tax payers, on a virtual trip into space with your robotic scouts to kindle their imaginations. Then they'll open their checkbooks.

Certainly this makes sense as an interim step to a manned mission. And there are residual benefits. The propulsion system for the robotics could be the same for the manned flight. And the robotics developed could be used to prepare Mars for the arrival of the manned flight.

Can I be a consultant. I'm not cheap, but I can be had.