Joe, I expressed my opinion and have no interest in defending it, other than to state that once again, you really don't understand what I wrote. I'm not against exploration, just the desire to do things in a short-term environment. Long-term plans will have the greatest scientific payoff. But what happens will happen regardless of what I think. I don't really like to talk about political policy and it's a waste of time in an online forum anyway, so I'll refrain from such commentary going forward. I can hear the cheers. On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 11:14 PM, Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com>wrote:
You can't defend that position, Chuck. Discussions about what targets are more important than others definitely are not "pointless" in our present economy. I'm sure NASA has many scientists talking about that very thing; whole panels probably. Why is it pointless what we explore? I can't understand that thinking. Just because astronauts are not going there in person doesn't mean we can't discover a great deal within our present budget and national interest. NASA has a whole fleet of Mars explorers in the pipeline, and a switch from Mars to Europa probably wouldn't be much more costly. You can throw up your hands and say it's all pointless, but I won't.