(Greg Kuperberg) wrote in message ...
In article k.net,
Mark R. Whittington wrote:
Well, Mr. Walsh, what I was doing was highlighting Glenn's opposing a
project that he would surely support were it not proposed by a Republican
President. If you believe that this is a charecteristic of all Democrats,
then I cannot argue with you.

Both Glenn and O'Keefe can take a one-way trip to the moon, Mars, or
LEO for all I care. But don't worry, in the next 20 years there won't
be a moonbase, there won't be a manned mission to Mars, and the space
station will go nowhere. The most likely outcome in this time
frame is that manned spaceflight will shrink from farce to fantasy.
The second possibility is that it will continue to limp along,
at the most with a re-enactment of Apollo.

As recently as 3-4 years ago people on sci.space.* groups told me
that the Chinese would not put up a manned flight. I tend to doubt
predictions about the future, even near future, of spaceflight
made on Usenet since then.

Meanwhile unmanned missions continue to succeed spectacularly.

Success is determined by political reaction basically. And I
don't mean in the Democrat vs. Republican sense but in the
sense that if the voters and policy makers are happy then
NASA (or whoever is putting up a flight) is allowed to add
money to their pension fund, dental plan, company picnics,
office air conditioning, bi-weekly pay and so on.

-McDaniel