On Mon, 10 May 2004 12:02:25 -0400, in a place far, far away, Michael
Gallagher made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

On Sat, 08 May 2004 16:48:50 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:

Because it's been mostly a costly failure in terms of doing anything
significant in space?

The Shuttle has not lived up to expectations, true. But that does not
mean having specialists among the crew, as to having a couple of
fighter pilots who are supposed to do anyting, is a bad one. The US
was not colonized by sailors; the sailors brought the colonists.

You miss the point. The colonists weren't goverment employees.