Re: OT: We got it up!

On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 23:21:27 -0400, keith <krw@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


>> The silly death traps should be sent to museums,
>> where they'll be more useful and less dangerous.
>
>Space is always going to be a dangerous place. Hell, *all* exploration is
>dangerous. Mountain climbing is dangerous too. Should it be banned? My
>only problem with the current NASA program is ISS. What exactly is its
>purpose, other than to justify the Shuttle? Which is "needed" by ISS,
>which...


Exactly. Humans have no especially useful function in low earth orbit,
other than fighting to stay alive. Space is best explored by robots.
All the useful space science has been robotic, as far as I know. You
could have launched a dozen disposable Hubbles, or built a hundred
world-class ground-based telescopes, for the cost of a couple of
useless shuttle flights. And the ISS is absurd.

John





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