Rocket Men

Jeremy - do your homework. "...since long before Alan Shepard reached orbit in his glorified tin can."; Shepard didn't "reach orbit" until Apollo 14 in 1971. His Mercury flight ten years earlier was a 15-minute suborbital test flight. John Glenn holds the honor of first American in orbit.

I am all for research and exploration, but the American people should demand to know the truth about NASA'a contribution to global climate change before one more launch is conducted.

Also, we'll never travel to the stars using chemical rockets, because it would tens of thousands of years to reach the nearest one with our existing technology. Therefore, it's not even worth pretending that we're "reaching for the stars" with what we've got today.

If we ever do go there, it'll be in something completely different. The manned space program is a welfare program for NASA and its contractors.

The cost and visibility associated with manned space missions makes it almost impossible to do anything truly risky or new. The weight and cost of everything, including the launch rocket, is determined by the fact that you have to send these incredibly fragile things out into space...and bring them back. There's no opportunity to see what's over the next Martian horizon, for the sheer hell of it, because your oxygen might run out. Just plant that flag and get back in the ship as soon as possible.

There is also zero possibility for astronauts to live off the land when they get to the moon or Mars. There's relatively little water, no oxygen, and no food. A permanent presence on either planet would require a steady stream of unmanned cargo ships going to and from the earth. As it is, we regularly have to send up cargo ships to the space station to service two or three people, who can't do anything but go stir-crazy. I'd love to see a detailed plan of how a moon mission would accommodate ten times as many people *and* keep them productive *and* keep them safe over a one-year period.

Robotic missions would do more to advance both space exploration and the technology of space travel. Our capabilities in radiation-hardened electronics are woefully behind the earthbound state-of-the-art. Robotic missions would also do more to advance artificial intelligence, autonomous robots, and deep-space communications.