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To: Cincinatus' Wife
It's also reality. Remember the human repair of Hubble? People couldn't get enough of it.

I do. They were exciting adventures. They were also miserable expenditures: it would have been better, faster and cheaper simply to build a whole new telescope every time, and to launch it into orbit via unmanned rocket.

The repairs did capture the public imagination, but I'm not sure they did so more than the arresting images from Hubble itself. And then there are the images and data from the planetary probes, which were obtained for a tiny fraction of what the manned space program costs, and whose scientific value far outweighs anything that has ever come out of the manned space program.

Entertainment and inspiration are valid aims for the space program, but even on that score the unmanned program delivers far more for far less expense.

59 posted on 05/29/2003 1:20:05 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: Physicist
re: Entertainment and inspiration are valid aims for the space program, but even on that score the unmanned program delivers far more for far less expense)))

Maybe the unmanned program needs to hire some PR jerks. When I visit the jpl site, I'm just blown away and excited by all that's going on. Right now, only one probe goes out at a time. What if we sent a *team* of probes, to land on either the moon or Mars, which would then fan out in a grid. Wow. Think of the pics we'd get before they keeled over in a ditch somewhere. Maybe anthropomorphise a robot, a la C3PO.

Somehow, we've got to ditch the celebrity-naut culture or we may as well live for the funerals. The Retired Ones sit on non-profit boards, give speeches, and basicaly obstruct as much as possible to protect their legacies.

74 posted on 05/30/2003 5:36:10 AM PDT by Mamzelle
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