Howdy,

I received this from a young high school student in my local chapter of the Mars Society. I would appreciate anyone listing reasons to explore space (please provide factual information about how useful sapce exploration has been -- inventions, economics, etc.) I'd love to give this kid some ammo to balst his stupid teacher with!

"In my political science class i truelly learned of the closed mindedness of people towards human exploration of mars or even outerspace in general. We are studying political action groups and in essence that is what we are because we are looking for support of the government. Anyways i decided to bring it up to my teacher and he was so strongly against the idea like it was a complete waste of money he basically implies the all of NASA is unneccessary. He keeps asking why is it important and what good would it do i tried to explain but he wouldn't really listen. Then i brought the discussion to the rest of the class and they all hit me down for it its like being in the middle ages i'm suprised they didn't start throwing stones and rotten apples at me. People are saying that its useless and when i told them that its necessary for man kind because earth doesn't have a whole lot of time and they just said that it doesn't matter implying a "lets destroy the earth and take it for all its worth and leave nothing for our descendants" attitude. These people appeared to be the most selfish people i've seen. Someone asked me if i was on drugs people laughed but i remained strong on my standpoint. No one seems to truelly understand the importance. We will soon prove these fools wrong! stand strong my friends and continue making this organization a strong one. If you have any comments or suggestions as to what i should do in light of this please offer them to me. Thanks."

Ad Astra -- Matt Lowry, North Shore Mars Society chapter contact and somewhat miffed teacher