[Lancey Howard]

Not long after the Challenger explosion there was the usual cowardly din from the socialists that the US would be better off and spend far less money on its space program if it concentrated on unmanned rather than manned space exploration.

A very good editorial cartoonist at the time published a cartoon which depicted several horse-drawn Conestoga wagons with nobody in them. People were instead standing behind the wagons, which were ostensibly pointed westward, and the cartoon was captioned, "Fearful of the unknown, the early pioneers launched unmanned wagon trains to explore the American West."

I wish I still had a copy of that cartoon because my description doesn't do it justice. But it was beautiful, and it really hit home. Space exploration is all about man reaching for the stars.

[FITZ]

usual cowardly din from the socialists that the US would be better off and spend far less money on its space program if it concentrated on unmanned rather than manned space exploration.

How is it socialist to think it might be better to send robots than parents of small children into space?

[Man of the Right]

Your position reminds of B-grade Westerns. The Indians attacked until the last one was shot off his horse by the cowboys with repeating rifles. The Indians never stopped, canvassed, asked themselves "how are we doing?" and "is there a better way to achieve our objective, which is to preserve our land and way of life?"

Manned space flight was conceived in the 1940s at a time when there no computers, no modern sensors or communications, no robots, no miniaturization. The notion that you need spam in a can to exploit space is so lacking in vision, it brings me to tears. The Shuttle is a failure. Its premise, that a reuseable shuttle can substantially reduce the cost of access to space was proven false by the Shuttle. The folks who launch satellites--DOD and commercial interests--largely abandoned the Shuttle in the '80s. The Shuttle soldiers on. Two of the five Shuttles representing this 1960s technology have now crashed, killing 13 or 14 people. Three remain. Either the fleet can be retired, or NASA can operate it, statistically killing another 21 people over the next 150 missions, thereby terminating the Shuttle once and for all.

[Sam Cree]

"Space exploration is all about man reaching for the stars."

That is very well said.

[Atlas Sneezed]

"A very good editorial cartoonist at the time published a cartoon which depicted several horse-drawn Conestoga wagons with nobody in them. People were instead standing behind the wagons, which were ostensibly pointed westward, and the cartoon was captioned, "Fearful of the unknown, the early pioneers launched unmanned wagon trains to explore the American West.""

The better analogy is of "horseless wagons", (trains) which indeed opened up the west. Men are as necessary for spaceflight as horses are for exploration.

And the other problem with the analogy is that people were meant to live and work self sufficiently at their own expense in the undeveloped west, while the spending of billions of taxpayer money on the dream of sending a few governemnt elites to live off planet earth is pretty offensive to freedom.

Those weren't governemnt-funded wagons. Those pioneers spent their own money and took their own risks.

You and NASA can do whatever you want after NASA is privatized or turned into a charity for people looking for inspirational feats.