In late July, 1969, I wrote my first letter-to-the-editor, to the Ventura Star-Free Press. In it I challenged the notion that the money spent on space would be better spent on Earth, and blasted the nay-sayers with typical adolescent fervor--I was 15 at the time.

The funny thing is, I share the same name as my father. When the letter was published, he was rather embarrassed when everyone he knew congratulated him on it. He was embarrased because he was, and is, a lifelong fanatic Rightist, and he was constantly grumbling and cursing about "wasting good money on that space foolishness". He couldn't see any immediate payoff to it, and in a limited sense he was correct. That ties into that poster's assertion that conservatives killed the space program because of lack of vision. It takes a decades-long vision to understand where space exploration can take us.

I won't make the mistake of extrapolating one conservative's views to tar all of you. But it reinforces the point that politics is a very poor indicator of support for exploring space.

--Robert