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Old January 10th, 2004, 10:10 PM   #26
Bijou88
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I love space exporation but I think building a Moon base and sending people to Mars is premature at this time. We have not finished building the International Space Station yet. In fact, it is behind schedule and vastly more expensive than originally predicted. A Moon Base of any consequence would be prohibitively expensive. Remember, we are fighting a costly war and have a great buget deficit looming above us. I do not think the American people will support going to the Moon just to keep NASA's bottom line healthy. As for Mars, we are having trouble sending robot probes successfully to the Martian surface let alone humans. Remember the multi-billion dollar probe that was lost in 1999 when the computors on the craft couldn't understand each other? It seems that one department at NASA was using metric units and another was using English units of measurement. I wouldn't trust those "rocket scientists" with my life. The only way we will have a manned mission to Mars is if China decides to try to do it first. If I were to predict when Humans will first land on Mars, I would say within the next 30 to 40 years. This will allow time for China to build their manned space program to the level where they can challenge the U.S. in space supreamacy. Will Humans one day stand on Mars? Yes, it will happen. Its just that the Astronaut, Cosmonaut or Taikionaut who will first do this has not been born yet.
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