[Flightdeck]

A great intangible result of human spaceflight is it's effect on the next generation. Thousands of smart young adults become the best scientists/pilots/engineers they can possibly be in the hopes that one day they will be selected by NASA. While some do get selected, the end result is a fantastic scientific resource for America to draw from. Without human spaceflight, our overall scientific arsenal would be greatly damaged.

[harryK]

This kind of talk is what I'm talking about. We are tying national prestige on manned space flight. On the notion that technologic advance is based on sending people on mission that no one really cares about. Perhaps, if NASA had a grand vision guiding its programs. I would feel differently but they don't. They have been mess around running experiments only ivory tower academic care about. People still have stars in their eyes and nostalgia left over from our moon missions, and people have bought into the idea that if we just keep pluging away, we will one day have a STAR TREK. We can't even find a safe cheap, clean and renewable power source or stop killing each other. We have forty million Americans without health insurance. It will take 1.6 trillion dollars by some estimates to fix an aging infrastructure. GOD, help us. We need to get our heads out of the clouds.