Dear Ron:
Elena would agree with you. I once read a brilliant little book by the author Mary Roach. It's title was Packing For Mars. This lady literally put her heart and her soul into this project. She went to Russia and trained to be a cosmonaut. She qualified to fly on the Soyuz spacecraft but would have had to pay $20 million to actually take a flight. She went to the Johnson Space Center and took US astronaut training including a two-week course on how to use the toilet on the international space station.
The ending of the book produced a real pearl of wisdom. She talked about how cold and inhospitable space was. She talked about how dangerous a long-duration spaceflight was for humans. She kept talking about all the negatives. I was sure that the book was going to end saying that we should not send human missions to Mars. Then she surprised the hell out of me with the final words in the book:
"Oh well, if we don't send humans to Mars, they won't spend that money on social programs. What the heck, we might as well go ahead and do it."
Ron if I was in court now, my words would be: "I rest my case."
With kindest regards,
No comments:
Post a Comment