Smart quotes

[Benji]

Of course, when reading brooks from people like Kraft and Cernan, you get their perspective on space, usually in the epilogue. Here is a quote from a letter to Discover magazine, which was printed in July, 2003, which pretty much sums up their arguments of why we should send people into space instead of robots and unmanned probes.

"The letter from Discover [May] made me reflect on decades-old debates over the need for human exploration of space. The answer to the question, "What are we going to send them up there in?" is "Anythign you can strap a seat and handlebars to!" I liken this rationale to the reasons for taking an amusement-park ride. We don't need to take that gut-wrenching ride, we don't know if we'll survive it, and the ride doesn't go anywhere. But we'll stand out in the blistering sun* in crowded lines and pay our hard-earned money just for the thrill. Do we need to send a person into space? No. But if you're not allowed to ride the rides, why bother going? Science is a minority, adventure is a majority, and what good scientist is not an adventurer?" -C.G. Payne; Bowling Green, Kentucky

Of course, I must add the worn-out reason that humans can reason in a way that robots can't, blah, blah, blah. Also, though, human error can be a good thing. Countless discoveries have been made when someone has done something by mistake and done something wonderful. A robot doing everything perfectly all of the time wouldn't stumble across these things.

Of course, we also know of all of the arguments that we shouldn't have left the Moon. Somebody has a new take on this, too.

"If we had followed un the Apollo missions with a permanent lunar base, we might now be crafting our deep-space probes from lunar materials and launching them into deep space using a solar-powered maglev rail system for a fraction of the energy now required. I can only imagine the technology spin-off that might have made their way into our homes and economy by now.-William H. Lanteigne; Indianapolis, Indiana.

*Benji's note: As Sara learned the hard way[/i][/quote]