Replies

"What reward/dividend has the tax payer received for subsidizing two Space Shuttles that have been lost along with their crews? Some great Discovery Channel programming? I don't think tax dollars should be used merely to achieve the goals articulated by Captain Kirk in the introduction to Star Trek. We have other business to take care of on Earth."

I am a private pilot. I enjoy a privilage that for the vast existance of humanity simply did not exist nor was even thought to be possible. And only 100 years ago.
A blink of an eye.
In that blink of an eye we went from the Wright brothers to moon walking.
To expect warp drive after our first baby steps off the earth is not realistic. We are preparing for our next more confident baby steps. To return to the moon.
It is not todays NASA' fault its only bird is shuttle. Those decisions were made decades ago. Quit beating up NASA for decisions made then.

Shuttle has taught us things not possible any other way. WE learn by doing. We must fly to advance our abilities. Shuttle has deployed deep space probes, it has tought us how to construct in space, it has given us the ablity to repair the hubble. Hubble was launched flawed. Shuttle saved that telescope. Tt has taught us many lessons, some terrible. But no other way to learn them. Everything we learned on shuttle will go into the next vehicles. And that vehicle will have issues.

I could point to dozens of web pages about the benefits of
space exploration, technologies developed and of lives saved because of it, but you can easily find them yourself on google.

Im going to tell you what I think instead, and some comments from others that speak a little more to the heart that I find ring true.

One of my most convincing arguments for space exploration is the analogy that Earth itself is a spacecraft. Everything we learn about how to function and live in space applies directly to our spacehip Earth. How to recycle air, water, how to generate and use power
efficiently, how to grow food in closed ecosystems. All of it is important. All of this can benefit mankind in a world with a fast growing population. Understanding other worlds is how we understand OUR world better, to understand how it formed and where it is going. Its our only home for now.

"We must not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began, and to know it for the first time."
T.S. Eliot

Astronaut Story Musgrave thoughts on the matter.....................
"Why Space, Why Explore?

We have no choice, Sir. It is the Nature of Humanity, it is the Nature of Life

The Globe was created and Life Evolved, and you look at every single cubic millimeter on this Earth, You can go 30,000 feet down below the
Earth surface, You can go 40,000 feet up in the air and Life is There. When you look at the globe down there, you see Teeming Life Everywhere

It is the Power of Life, And maybe I am not just a Human up here, you know. Now Life is Leaping off the Planet. It is heading to other parts of the Solar System, other parts of the Universe

There are those kinds of Pressures. It isn't simply politics, it is not simply technology, it is really not just the essence of humanity, but it is sort of also, you could look at it as maybe the Essence of
Life. I think Teilhard de Chardin, in Phenomenon of Man, I believe he put that incredibly well. So those kind of Forces are at Work. It is the nature of humans to be exploratory and to Push On

Yes, it costs resources and it does cost a lot, and there is a risk, there is a penalty, there is a down side, but Exploration and Pioneering, I think those are the critical things, it is the Essence of what Human Beings are, and that is to try to understand their
Universe and to try to participate in the entire Universe and not just their little Neighborhood" -Story Musgrave

President Bush at the Columbia memorial at JSC................

"The cause of exploration and discovery is not an option we choose, It is a desire written in the human heart."

And at the announcement of new American space policy...........

"Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives, and lifts our national
spirit."

WE are all here today because people before us wondered what was beyond the next hill or beyond the horizon.
They did this on ships that they new might not return and on imperfect wings.

We OWE those unborn the same advancements we inherited.
It does not cost that much, and what it returns is priceless.

I agree with you, but this is something that we can't argue to the "sheeple".

I'm sorry they won't get it until China is standing on the Moon or on asteroids and launching well aimed rocks down on us and then the their bleating will be heard, "Oh why, Ohh how did this happen, how is it now that the greatest nation on this Earth is now going to be destroyed in the next 15 min and the Government can't do anything about it.

If they think China isn't seeing space as the ultimate weapon’s platform and that any UN declaration is going to stop them they are so far gone there is no hope for them.

Our industry will not go there because there is no profit in it, yet, except for LEO. China on the other hand doesn’t need profit for it to make sense. China sees space as their ultimate defense plan, and we are just plain stupid if we don't see that. Nobody inspects China's rockets for weapons or asks them what their projects are for weapons platforms, why ask anyway, they'd just lie.

U.S. industry couldn't develop space based weapons on their own if they tried, some leftist freak would scream bloody murder, and again there is no profit in it.

If we cede the high ground to other nations then it's our own stupid fault when we are looking down the barrel of a gun. Imagine if Japan had developed the ICBM before us and what the world could have looked like.

The "sheeple" do not see this as defense spending and that's probably the mistake of splitting NASA off from the military long ago.