"The Daring Dufas" wrote in message
...

stuff snipped

Open the pod bay doors, please HAL . . .

Well, we could already have been to mars if the space program wasn't
vulnerable to the vagaries of politics.

TDD

I think it's more a case of robotics reaching the point where it's really
not very necessary to send a human in order to collect high quality data.
What did Neil Armstrong do that a robotic rover couldn't? Play a round of
golf? (-: We've had enough probe failures on Mars to indicate that it
would be quite possible to get them there to be the first dead humans.
That, I think, would be bad for funding. (-:

We've actually sent quite a few Roving Roombas out there to suck up rocks
and look for Martians.

I had hoped the Obama would have been at least as smart as JFK and would set
the US to a technical task like the moon shot that would once again put us
at the pinnacle of human achievment.

I just read that there's been a tremendous advance in solar technology that
nearly halves the cost of solar panels. I'll bet there are plenty of
important discoveries still to be made in solar. It's not too late to
retool all our empty heavy manufacturing plants to take advantage of the new
technology.

Most likely, we'll do the R&D and China or some other country will profit by
it. When the Repubs regain control, it will be rightly so because Obama was
a dupe and actually thought the giving the banks money would "trickle down"
to the jobless. Ha! He missed the opportunity to create 10's of thousands
of jobs and help make the US the leader in solar tech the way we were with
PC tech. Instead we got a health care plan that pleases no one except
insurance companies and no change in the shedding of American blood to try
to create Muslim democracies in the middle east (isn't that like being a
little pregnant or a jumbo shrimp - an oxymoron?) These people hate our
guts. We should have gone to Iraq. Found and killed Saddam and his sons,
bumped the next three hoodlums to head of state and said "Now don't make us
come back for you!"

Change you can believe in. A nickel and two pennies from your tax dollar
and the nickel turned out to be a slug.

--
Bobby G.