Bruce Toback wrote:
>
> Jeff Kell writes:
>
> >There is also, however unfortunate, the public image.  The Apollo
> >mission was important to a lot of people at the time, but after the
> >first one, the level of public interest declined almost exponentially.
> >That was at least a factor in the decline of the space program.  And
> >the same might hold true for a possible Mars mission, it would likely
> >suffer the same PR fate.
>
> I know this takes the discussion even farther afield (so to speak), but...
>
> One thing that NASA has now that they didn't have in the late '60s --
> Apollo funding was being cut even before the first landing -- is an
> administrator with vision. Bureaucrats with vision are exceedingly rare,
> and I think that when Dan Goldin retires, he ought to be stuffed and put
> on display at the Smithsonian, just to prove that such creatures exist.
>
Also less budget pressure.  I would vote for canceling the
problem ridden
F-22 program and funding manned trips to Mars. Parenthetically, I
read in
my newspaper that getting rid of he deficit completely may not be
a good
thing!

Nick D.