I was up 36 hours and oxygen deprived when i wrote that rambling note/rant/incoherent gibberish....

There was an interesting analogy I once heard...

Apparently the chinese sent out ships on a voyage of discovery before the europeans- the emporer died and the ships were called back and destroyed.... We dont speak chinese because of that stupid decision

we went to the moon and won the political prize- our president died and now we dont even have the schematics for a saturn booster...

its very sad what we threw away, if we dont get to work we will never have it back...

the US is a young country, we should never forget that many countries have been world powers and disappeared because of short sightedness... I am afraid we are taking that path- we may be mostly irrelavent in 100 years-

remember portugal?

didnt think so...

we have, I think, become too civilized- the idea of death in exploration seems unacceptable now, why?

I bet if we took a poll tonite more than 50% of us here would go to mars even if we had only 50% chance of returning... so it isnt lack of people wanting to explore- its organizations afraid of failure.... if the original europeans that claimed america had our attitude the indians would be a lot better off... of course all we would have is jamestown....

some amorphous "we" has decided that death in space exploration is unacceptable- but I have never met anyone that holds that opinion- where are these people ?!

I can see it now:

"Gentlemen Lewis and Clark propose to explore the lands west of here.... what say ye?"

"well we need a safety study"
"risk analysis"
"what do the polls say?"
"ahem, lets attach a spending bill"
"their equipment up to OSHA standards?"

....................

and in 1998 Lewis and Clark finally got to explore the west....

It isn't just the US either, actually I think we are the only western country willing to take a little risk... damn little- but more than anyone else

oh well- better learn my chinese.....

you know, we can argue global warming, nuclear winter etc....but if we stay here its a certain death- humanity needs to get out there!

Yeah, ok, I am a little bitter....

THIS is my more coherent rant..... I am back at 2500 feet
sorry for the rambling rant earlier... lot of it was _way_ off topic
<whew!>