Panel Wants Deep Space, Not Landings as U.S. Goal

Panel Wants Deep Space, Not Landings as U.S. Goal
From:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/sc...=1&ref=science
quote
A panel examining the future of the United States 2019 human spaceflight
program will suggest that the Obama administration may want to skip the
part about landing on other worlds.
end quote


So, let me get this straight, when the Mars mission was killed, 40 years ago,
because it would cost some billion to go there and do a sample return,
the space shuttle was invented, and that has been orbiting the earth ever since.

To go nowhere where no man has gone before ;-)
It did cost many more billions, not even counting the ISS hobby, then Von Braun's
manned mars mission would have.
And it gave us: Nothing.
Not a things.
Zero.
And now the US soon cannot even go to lower earth orbit anymore,
and needs Russia to provide a taxi service to there.

Yet an other change of direction, just now that the first tests for the Ares for the moon mission
are about to happen, makes *me* think that the ever changing direction of US politics is
killing US supremacy in space.
You need to set a course and stick to it, if you want to go somewhere,
and not circle around the earth waiting for a miracle to happen.