Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!YALEVM.BITNET!HOWGREJ From: HOWGREJ@YALEVM.BITNET (Greg Howard) Newsgroups: sci.space Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V9 #207 Message-ID: Date: 26 Jan 89 05:33:45 GMT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 22 Someone recently wrote, in the continuing manned/unmanned debate, that with the amount it would cost to go to Mars, we could build 2000 probes and check out every cubic centimeter of the solar system (sorry, I think I nuked the original posting by accident). This may be true in monetary terms, but politically, it's far off. A manned mission generates much more interest, and therefore will receive much more funding, than any unmanned probe (or 2000 unmanned probes). Fer cryin' out loud, NASA can barely maintain any unmanned missions because they don't generate enough noise so that politicians want to fund them. On the other hand, there is a very real possibility of our spending $100 billion+ to go to Mars. Though hundreds of times less economically viable, manned missions are politically more appealing, and Dr. Van Allen's plan of dropping the manned space program might well leave NASA without enough money to keep the coffee machine running. Just out of curiousity, and to keep from offending anyone, is there a non-sexist term for a "manned" mission? Here they've taken to calling first-year students "freshpersons", but a "personned" mission just doesn't sound right. Any thoughts? The Space People will contact us when they | Greg Howard can make money by doing so. - DAVID BYRNE | HOWGREJ at YALEVM