On Wed, 1 Nov 2000, K Street wrote:
> How about that International Space Station, huh? Seventy some billion
> dollars and a lot of delays later, they've finally sent up the first
> crew!
>
> Could be the start of something big.
I hope so.
I'd like to believe what that NASA guy said on Monday, that October 30
could be "the last day we don't have humans in space".
I'd like to think that we can use this experience, of living in space
for extended periods, to move on to better things; a return to the Moon,
and someone on Mars. I'm twenty-four, and nobody in my lifetime has
gone beyond Earth orbit. I find that unutterably sad. Maybe, hopefully,
this is the start of something.
But I'm afraid that it isn't, that it's going to be just like the Shuttle,
so that all the energy and money for crewed spaceflight gets funneled into
things that go round and round the Earth, and nothing goes further, that
fifty years from now we *still* won't have sent anyone to Mars.
To borrow a line from Mulder on the X-Files, I _want_ to believe that this
is the start of something, rather than another long stasis. But I don't
know if I can.
--
Andrea Leistra [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"If you can keep your head while all those about you are
losing theirs, perhaps you have misunderstood the situation."
-- Daniel Keys Moran, _The Long Run_
