Exactly. The USA should lead the world in surface transportation
research and development, not be playing catch-up all the time.
Ford is coming out with hybrid cars that get very good gas mileage -
almost as good as my old diesel Rabbit. They're buying the technology
from Toyota.
We need to move the technology of our space program out of the 70/80's.
That's being done every day.
If we continue to set our sights on LEO, that's all we'll ever do, save for
the
occassional cutsie-robot pushing sand around and drilling a whopping 6 inches
into the soil. THERE was a waste of money.
How can you say that? It proved out a bunch of new technologies and
gathered lots of data. And did it on schedule and within budget. If
any part of the space program leads to earth-bound advances in
technology, the Mars rover missions do.
They didn't accomplish anything
that on-orbit RADAR and spectral imaging couldn't accomplish.
I disagree!
Can orbital radar and imaging resolve features as small as the rovers
can? Can they do the kind of analysis and sampling? Can they even do
things like report surface temperature, wind, dust, etc.?
If people are ever to go to Mars, we need lots of data on what the
Martian surface is really like. The Moon is easier in some ways - no
wind, no dust blown by the wind, no frigid night atmosphere to cool
things down.
But it looked cute on CNN.
More than cute. It did the job.
Note also that Mars has been a graveyard of failed missions. Yes,
there were spectacular successes from Mariner IV to Viking to the
rovers, but also many that were simply lost. Given the failure rate, a
Mars trip with people is simply too risky right now. And remember that
a mission with people has to come back!
Threaded Mode
