Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!apple!well!tneff From: tneff@well.UUCP (Tom Neff) Newsgroups: sci.space Subject: Re: SPACE Digest V9 #207 Message-ID: <10525@well.UUCP> Date: 30 Jan 89 00:20:54 GMT References: Reply-To: tneff@well.UUCP (Tom Neff) Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA Lines: 31 In article HOWGREJ@YALEVM.BITNET (Greg Howard) writes: > ... A manned mission generates much more interest, and >therefore will receive much more funding, than any unmanned probe (or 2000 >unmanned probes). I cannot believe the poster seriously considered the implications of his statement. Not that I think the number itself is all that realistic, but just stop and THINK for a moment what 2,000 (TWO THOUSAND) planetary and Earth probes would yield! We would know the Solar System as thoroughly as we know the Galapagos, or Sausalito for that matter. I submit that if we invested in a BLANKET program of probes, so that Joe Sixpack could watch high quality full color Ganymede travelogues on evening TV as easily as he watches pro golf today, then the public would be DEMANDING manned exploration, in a BIG way, instead of sullenly tolerating more levies for Star Wars and a Space Station (which will never venture farther into the Solar System than Newark NJ ventures from Harrisburg PA). Yet even if the public never plumps for large scale manned exploration at their own expense -- exploration on the dole is always a risky prospect, as Columbus discovered -- the probes would GIVE US our solar system in a way I doubt we're going to get it given present trends. What we're doing at present seems more logically designed to keep Rockwell humming than to keep human knowledge advancing. I don't wish to denigrate the fine work of the thousands of scientists and engineers in the aerospace program (some of whom are reading this); I have the highest confidence that they'd do equally exemplary work on a more sensible space program, if management assigned it. -- Tom Neff tneff@well.UUCP or tneff@dasys1.UUCP