Everyone in this forum is here because he is knowledgeable and enthusiastic about Mankind's first steps into space, we have grown up with the scientific age, the space program, science fiction, and I'm sure every one of us would have signed up in a flash if given the opportunity to go into into space, even well informed as we are about the risks. We all share the conviction that Man's future is in the solar system, and eventually the stars; that a species that does not explore and expand will eventually decline.

But we are also scientists, engineers and technologists, and we can evaluate the successes and failures of our space programs objectively, so let us not let our prejudices and dreams color our technical assessment of our last 50 years in space. We are not in the place today I expected to be when as a ten year old I heard Sputnik had changed the world forever. By this time I had expected permanent colonies on Luna and Mars, and routine manned expeditions into the Belt and and the outer Planets. After a half-century of space exploration our achievements have been superb, but only one manned mission, the Apollo rocks, was of lasting and significant value, and it was carried out near the beginning of the space age.

Our most successful and productive robotic program funding is being crippled by the ever-hungry manned mission development, even though their total cost is miniscule compared to the latter. We have exploited profitably the few industrial uses of space, and we are doing extremely well on the scientific side, without any significant contribution from our expensive manned programs. Comsats, Navsats, and Landsats have already paid for our investments, and the astronomy satellites have liberated us from the fog of the atmosphere and shown us a whole new universe. These are all missions we once thought could only be done from a manned space station.

I'm still in favor of the dream of man in space, and I want to see it happen in my lifetime. But in our commercially obsessed age, I can't see it getting the support it needs until we find something out there that demands a man in a spacesuit. Space is vast, I'm sure that "something" exists, and our best chance to find it is to saturate the solar system with unmanned probes until we do find it. That is the
best way to ensure we have a manned space program in the future.