On Oct 25, 8:26*am, "Robert Green" wrote:
"The Daring Dufas" wrote in ...

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.

Big disappointment. He seems to buy whatever crock his "advisors"
hand him.
Like killing the promising, already in development new generation of
shuttles in favor
of, for god's sake, manned mission to Mars! Gimme a break!!!!

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.

But, sweetheart, that's not how it works in our dysfunctional
whorehouse AKA
the U.S. Congress. They are paid off big-time by corporate energy
folks to
slow or sabotage any attempt to capitalize on the gorgeous research
being
done by our science/technology whizzes.

And a weak and confused Obama doesn't use the full weight of his bully
pulpit,
so busy is he singing "Kumbaya".

I remember decades ago driving through the Calif. desert where Solar
One
(I think that was its name) was a demo project. Of course then it
wasn't
competitive price-wise with the oil that our sons and daughters are
buying
with their blood. But instead of putting govt money into scaling up,
the project
was killed. Somebody should do a documentary like "Who Killed the
Electric Car"!

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.

Wait a minute; I'm a little confused. It was BUSH in 2008 who threw
money at
Big Banking, at the behest of his Wall Street-turned-Presidential
advisor
weasels. Was it an accident that these Wall Street guys structured
the bailout
such that the banks were not OBLIGATED to start lending again; help
small
business stay afloat. They banks took the money laughed...all the way
to the bank.
People couldn't get loans; the country drifted even further into
recession; still with
us. Wouldn't SOMEBODY have had the brains to figure that you don't
shovel
all our taxpayer money out to Big Banking without SOME conditions
attached!!!!

People -- not only tea party useful idiots -- constantly conflate the
BUSH bailout and the OBAMA stimulus.
HB

*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.