On the manned side - I think one of the main dings against NASA from the Columbia accident board is there really wasn't any overall purpose or goal. According to Sean O'Keefe, et al - the new broad goal is exploration. Hopefully, (or at least my hope) that will mean a balance between unmanned and manned exploration. Patrick - your comments about private enterprise were echoed by Harrison Schmitt when he spoke at USU recently. But, do you really think that will happen in the near term? (i.e. before 2025). -----Original Message----- From: Patrick Wiggins [mailto:paw@trilobyte.net] Sent: Mon 1/26/2004 10:14 PM To: Utah Astronomy Cc: Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Re: NASA's purpose? Chris Clark wrote: > > ...In other words, what do you > (we?) expect to "get" out of our collective spending on NASA's activities? How's about the laying of the foundation of future (and to some extent, current) private investment in space? IMHO we all owe NASA and the world's other space agencies a big thank you for getting us into space. But while government will always have a place "up there" it's private enterprise that will really push things up there in the future. Patrick _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com