As I Hurtled Through Space, One Thought

We're Going To Go To The Moon. We're Going To Go On To Mars. We're Going To Set Up A Base On The Moon. Ok, But No Money To Pay For It, Nothing In The Budget For It. And So The Decision Made At That Time Was To Cancel The Whole Shuttle Program To Save Money, Which I Think Was Very, Very Short Sighted.

I Think Sometime We Will Go To Mars And I Think We'll Explore It With Humans Sometime, But I Think It's Really Wise To Do All The Robotic Exploration Ahead Of Time And Learn As Much As Possible. Once We Have Learned As Much As Possible With The Robots, Then That's The Time To Send People, And Let Them Then Continue The Research That The Robots Have Started.

In America, We Have No Means Of Getting To Our Own Space Station. We Have To Pay The Russians To Put Our People Up There To Send Them Into Space - Rendezvous With The Station And Bring Them Back At The End Of Their Stay, And That To Me Is Just Wrong. We're Supposed To Be The World's Greatest Space-faring Nation, And To Cancel Our Own Means Of Getting There I Thought Was A Mistake, Even Though It Would Save Some Money.

We Used To Joke About Canned Men, Putting People In A Can And Seeing How Far You Can Send Them And Bring Them Back. That's Not The Purpose Of This Program... Space Is A Laboratory, And We Go Into It To Work And Learn The New.

Zero G And I Feel Fine.