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When my dad was a kid, he traveled vicariously by reading Richard Halliburton books. Today people hop on a plane and travel. I had the Mercury astronauts as a kid. They were doing something, as Halliburton did, no one else could do. Now space flight is no big deal. Vicarious experience only goes so far. NASA needs to make space interactive. SETI took off because anyone with a computer could be involved in searching for ET. Give kids a chance to get at the controls of a lunar or Mars rover or some other robot and they'll be hooked on science for life. It would also drive interest in commercial space flights. Large scale government funded manned flight can wait until the technology advances. Right now the Shuttle is starving progress in space, not advancing it.

Give kids a chance to get at the controls of a lunar or Mars rover

Kids! What about groanups? Mobile Internet moonCam with a shovel-scoop would be a blast. BagdadCam was okay, but I'd pay ten cents a minute to drive the moonCam over to a rock and tip it over to watch the ants swarm out.