🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Added.8XrfC6y00Ui3MefU83@andrew.cmu.edu> HOWGREJ@YALEVM.BITNET (Greg Howard) writes:
> ... A manned mission generates much more interest, and
>therefore will receive much more funding, than any unmanned probe (or 2000
>unmanned probes).  

I cannot believe the poster seriously considered the implications of
his statement.  Not that I think the number itself is all that
realistic, but just stop and THINK for a moment what 2,000 (TWO
THOUSAND) planetary and Earth probes would yield!  We would know the
Solar System as thoroughly as we know the Galapagos, or Sausalito for
that matter. <grin>  I submit that if we invested in a BLANKET program
of probes, so that Joe Sixpack could watch high quality full color
Ganymede travelogues on evening TV as easily as he watches pro golf
today, then the public would be DEMANDING manned exploration, in a BIG
way, instead of sullenly tolerating more levies for Star Wars and a
Space Station (which will never venture farther into the Solar System
than Newark NJ ventures from Harrisburg PA).

Yet even if the public never plumps for large scale manned exploration
at their own expense -- exploration on the dole is always a risky
prospect, as Columbus discovered -- the probes would GIVE US our solar
system in a way I doubt we're going to get it given present trends.
What we're doing at present seems more logically designed to keep
Rockwell humming than to keep human knowledge advancing.  I don't wish
to denigrate the fine work of the thousands of scientists and engineers
in the aerospace program (some of whom are reading this); I have the
highest confidence that they'd do equally exemplary work on a more
sensible space program, if management assigned it.
-- 
Tom Neff                  tneff@well.UUCP
                       or tneff@dasys1.UUCP