On Thu, 2 Mar 2006 17:56:16 -0600, "Wolfgang"
wrote:


wrote in message
roups.com...

Today the bush administration announced it was drastically cutting back
the Nasa budget, so what little money is left can be funnelled
exclusively
toward 'manned space flight.'

That's exactly the opposite of what should be done.

Manned space flight is a useless publicity stunt.
What they are now cutting from Nasa are the programs that have actually
been useful.

Leaving aside the rather naive notion that something so routine that no one
notices unless something goes drastically wrong is a publicity stunt, that's
just about as wrong as it is possible for anything to be. Manned space
flight is pretty much the whole point of the four ****ing million year
exercise. Ever since Kubrick's monkeys stood up on their hind flippers and
stretched for an apple.....and couldn't reach it.....their descendents,
however much they've butchered one another and engaged in other deviltry,
have shared just one common and overarching goal......to reach the stars.
And now, just when it looks like it may actually be possible, we should
decide, nah, maybe it really would be better to go back to being monkeys
after all?

Not me.

Wolfgang


The way I see it, the use of robots is the *same thing* as humanity
reaching out to the stars. The recent conjecture that life on Earth
may have arisen, not in some warm, chemical rich, lightning struck
tide pool but rather deep down in the chemically rich areas around
deep thermal vents and black smokers in mid sea has precepitated a
change of heart in me concerning manned space flight. I still think it
should be done but right now I'd like to see robotic ships being
designed to drill down through the kilometers of ice on some of the
Jovian moons. Human ships would undoubtably have to have, for their
primary design, the maintenace of human life. Robots would be much
more efficient. Much quicker to develop. I see them as an
inter-planetary prosthesis, I guess. So I'd say go to Jupiter's moons,
with robots in the first waves. There is water there and there is
volcanism. If we were to find life there, then we would know that
there is something (or someone) probably out there at the end of our
star voyages. Minus that then the trip out becomes little more than a
grand exercise in sight seeing.


g.c.

Besides I'm suspicious that the real reason that manned flight is
being emphasized is that the technology that is developed for it is
more amenable to being used for military purposes.