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From: tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: space news from June 19 AW&ST, and Apollo-anniversary editorial
Message-ID: <14484@bfmny0.UUCP>
Date: 24 Jul 89 02:56:30 GMT
References: <1989Jul21.031420.1292@utzoo.uucp> <14479@bfmny0.UUCP> <1989Jul22.231302.24043@utzoo.uucp> <33400@apple.Apple.COM> <1989Jul23.215443.15698@utzoo.uucp>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Organization: ^
Lines: 24

I treasure Henry's acerbity, and would foot race him any day in the NASA
critic dept., but I do think that in "stretching things to make a point"
it is easy to cross the line into silliness, and this does no-one (nor
the debate) any good.  "20 years of nothing" is kind of an atrocious
misstatement.  "25 years of not enough, and 15 years of nothing useful"
might be more on the mark.  That is if you count things from the
planning stage.  If you are satisfied with the years in which things
come to fruition (clearly NASA has been) then the program's still
muddling along -- just you watch, Neptune will rival Saturn for awesome
images.  And HST, delayed as it is, will wow us within weeks of
activation.

What's missing is getting down and dirty on the inner planets, in my
view.  That's where the excitement lies.  IMAX on a sample return and
rover mission!  How bout it!

I just frankly think the other stuff, the "our generation is GOING"
horse****, is just another regrettable 70's artifact of overenthusiasm,
like Rolfing and est.  Columbus's generation didn't "GO" either, in
numbers any more significant than our space specialists have gone.  That
analogy is fairly flawed so I won't push it.  :-)
-- 
"My God, Thiokol, when do you     \\	Tom Neff
want me to launch -- next April?"  \\	uunet!bfmny0!tneff