On those who carry the tax burden

Gasp! Shocking news! Young cavelry officers today know nothing about horses!
The nation is incapable of defending itself!

> From: Dave Handwerk
> I'd fail the survey too. I don't know any o the
> (living) shuttle astronauts (other than a few old
> timers) nor there mission.

Why would you need to though? Why would you want to? A mars landing
shouldn't be about making one person famous any more than it should be about
planting a flag upon the surface.

> It may be called apathy, but I for one love
> space.

Personally I'd call it good taste. NASA has spent almost half a trillion
dollars on the manned space programme since the shuttle launched, and so
there's been precious little in terms of return aside from duplicating what
everyone else knew before. The shuttle is badly designed. The space station
is badly designed (and not even complete yet). And human health doesn't
function well in zero G. Who would want to know exact specific detaisl about
a programme that (apart from a few isolated events) has been a complete and
dismal waste of funds?

There's a difference betwen caring about space and caring about the NASA
manned space programme. It's just that NASA likes to pretend there isn't, as
doing so discourages people considering alternatives.

> I think to acquire and keep the younger generation's
> interest in space, NASA should not show the real life

NASA should be kept completely out of it. It's in that agency's best
interests to not admit to what it has miserably failed to do over the past
thirty five years. Much as I dislike Mr Zubrin's politics, his idea for
making fuel on Mars made almost every single NASA study of the problem
instantly redundant, and showed why the agency's inward focus ends up
producing sub-optimal design.

For manned missions at least. NASA does extremely good work in the unmanned
probes department. Personally I wish they'd stick to what they're good at,
and leave the manned systems to those more capable.

John