Thoughts on the Columbia Accident

[crazy a]

A letter to the editor, The Daily Reflector (Greenville, NC), 9 Feb.


The recent loss of life in the manned space program should open people's eyes. It's time to scrap that portion of the space program. The early successes, placing Glenn in orbit and Armstrong on the moon, racing against the Russians, served to stoke the nationalist flames and touched the hearts of all Americans. I believe the time has come to call a spade a spade. The cost to the taxpayer and the environment associated with the program are beyond comprehension. We've been propagandized to the point that it's considered almost treasonous to question NASA's huge drain on our resources. Conveniently, there are now reports that China will begin a manned space program. So what? Let them waste billions of pounds of solid rocket fuel shooting humans into space in an antiquated tin can. This space exploration flight is approximately the distance from Greenville to Winston-Salem.

The fact is that NASA has been toying with the lives of astronauts and the hearts and dreams of the American people for much too long. No significant advances in technology are associated with the manned program. It's been a huge drain on our tax coffers. All we have to show for it are some obsolete command modules in the Smithsonian.

Current technology, and those on the horizon, allow for complex robotic manipulation from the command center. Robotics are used in minutely detailed surgeries and to build scorchingly fast microchips. There's an entire spectrum of nanotechnology at hand, which allows us to work with particles up to one-billionth of a meter in size. I'm convinced that we have to master our earthly universe rather than looking to the stars.

In contrast, many of our servicemen live in poverty, our energy woes continue unabated and we condone murdering millions of babies in their mother's wombs.
BILL KROLL
Greenville

[AsIs]

Hey, I am glad he added that last part, lest we think he was a liberal. [img]wink.gif[/img]

And I guess that live saving medicines isn't technologically worthy enough. Having worked for a very brief time on the space program, I learned a little bit about what they do on the shuttle and it is amazing what they can do in space in the absence of gravity.

*sigh* Sorry you still live in North Carolina crazy, but good to see you again! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Wizz]

<font face="Georgia">Where to start?? Where to start!!??

Wow. Some people, I guess, just don't have a clue. I used to get a magazine from NASA called "NASA Tech Briefs", where research from NASA was published in a small, factoid pieces that would have maybe 4 on a page. Just a bit of information that might be of use to someone outside NASA that could have commercial benefit. Fascinating stuff...medicine, metalurgy, ceramics, affects of heat, cold, gravity, vaccuum, the list goes on and on.

I'd venture a guess that 80% of the stuff that we've gotten from this research would never be developed on it's own, but because of the benefits in space, the benefits were also staring at folks living on the planet.

The one thing, though, that NASA/space exploration brought us that revolutionized the world? Small computers. Oh, we would have gotten there eventually, but to get something reliable on a space capsule that was small enough (and light enough) led to something small enough and light enough to sit on our desk at home (or even sit on our lap while we travel coast to coast, plotting our course as we go.

We as a country are the most technologically advanced overall in the world. No small amount due to our being the only successful country to land on the moon. Too bad we can't say "Let's go to Mars, and also see what develops on the way, too".

[JaceSan]

Yeah, I've used NASA's Tech Briefs for research and paper writing. In fact I'm pretty sure I used an article from there as a reference for my Senior Design Project proposal.

I can see how a disaster like this would bring about the usual criticism of our space program though. You don't usually hear about the breakthroughs that have been accomplished because of it.

We are going back to Mars, Wizz. They'll be using more robots until a better understanding of how people could survive the trip becomes known. Eventually humans will get there. I hope it's in my lifetime.

[Nommy]

I cant stand the fully uninformed when it comes to why we have a manned mission to space. As some have mentioned above, we have gotten many benefits due to humna space flight. Curiosity is our best asset and putting it into applications in regards to space opens many, many doors.

[JaceSan]

Suffer the ignorance.