From: lid (John Savard)
Date: 6/6/2004 10:08 PM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id:

Having astronauts in space stations for long periods, and sending
probes to Mars to study it closely do seem to be steps that were
leading, all along, to a manned mission to Mars.


But right now there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to rush
such exploration, as existed in the case of the Moon after Sputnik.


Whose rushing? Its going to be 10 years before anyone sets foot on the Moon and
that's 41 years after the last person set foot on the Moon. A person born when
the Apollo 17 Lunar Module took off from the Moon's surface would be 41 years
old by the time manned Lunar explorations is resumed according to this plan and
you call that a big hurry.

What other projects take over half of a Man's life that you would call rushed
development?

In fact, the idea of going to Mars right now probably seems crazy to
many people right now, and so many feel that George W. Bush's plan for
space exploration will lead only to the cuts in other elements of the
space program, and not to any positive results.

Which are doing what? we have to improve our technology for sending things into
space in order to explore Mars, that will yield some spinoffs for unmanned
exploration. What are you afraid of exactly? If you could wait 41 years for a
return to the Moon, putting off a few unmanned probes for about 10 years can't
seem like too much can it?

Under what conditions would a manned mission to Mars not seem plain
silly?


We need to expand our territory. You must know how precarious our situation on
Earth is, it seems one billion Muslims are rattling their sabres itching to go
to war with us, nuclear deterrent be damned. Some day there will come a time
when our enemies will simply want to kill us and they won't care about the
consequences to themselves as their religious beliefs will bolster them. We
will retaliate and the result may destroy much of humankind. We need to move
elsewhere so we won't be so vulnerable to stupid ideologies promoted by foreign
cultures. Anti-Americanism is very popular in Western Europe, as they seem to
need an enemy to rail against, perhaps someday Americans will need to move
off-planet if they don't want to be constantly at war with these people. So
long as we're a big superpower people will want to fight us. Perhaps we can be
a big superpower elsewhere besides this planet so we can live in peace.

It seems that the oceans have grown too small and people tend to visit us with
explosive personalities, so we need to find bigger oceans, such as the vast
gulf of space between the Earth and Mars.

Look at the low unemployment rates of the 1960s, compared to what we
have now,

What does this have to do with space exploration and expanding our territory?
We have to do these things to survive as a Nation. Economics is a side issue.

Tom