The idea of flying to Mars in a space ship gives me the ******* willies!!!
As soon as I no longer could see the Earth, I would be intensely frightened.
Which is precisely why you're not an astronaut.
This is actually one of the areas where I agree with RGS (shocking, I know). You can't gut the space program, divert what resources remain to mucking around in low Earth orbit for the next umpty-squat years, encourage almost solely commercial (profitable) applications for space and realistically expect to get to Mars.
And why not Mars? The pure science alone that would come from putting human hands and a human brain on another planet would be priceless, never mind the technological advances (and employment, and re-emphasis on science and math, and maybe just plain old excitement) that would come with an Apollo-style Mars program. Obama is being a wuss, there's plenty that can be cut to fund it if he could find his cajones.
What you are saying, is that instead of revamping a $100 billion dollar program that was supposed to be done in 2020 that is already over budget and behind schedule, we should continue to invest in, when we have very viable private, American corporations who have not only made extreme headway, but in someways have leapfrogged NASA in the few years they have been around.
Look at the innovations that these private corporations
Divert? We just INCREASED NASA funding, and it's going to be going to R&D and partnering with this private industries to find the cheapest, quickest way into space. There's no great enemy, government doesn't work well without one either. Sad, but true.
