Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:35:21 -0400
From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [WSFA] To do for the President in 2013: Space
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Excerpt:
When asked if we should spend tax dollars to go to the moon, the great
Walter Cronkite used to say, "We can't spend a dime on the moon, son.
There's not even a McDonald's up there."

Cronkite's little joke was his way of pointing out that every dollar
NASA spent went to creating jobs and long-lasting institutions on Earth.
The reward was the learning. Today, experts say the United States is
years ahead of where it would have been in science and technology had it
not led in space.
<...>
the truth is that NASA needs to use the spaceflight hardware and
facilities it already owns, and spend only what taxpayers can afford.
If it did, America could once again lead the world in space. Take it
from a reporter who has covered NASA for every day of its five decades
in existence: America's space program does not need another busload of
suits with untanned faces stabbing holes in the air, debating over
things about which they know little.

For example, NASA has been lectured tirelessly on the reasons why
astronauts need not return to the lunar surface. "We've been there
before," the current president once said.

"I find that mystifying," says Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk
on the moon."It would be as if 16th-century monarchs proclaimed that 'we
need not to go to the New World, we have already been there.' Or as if
President Thomas Jefferson announced in 1808 that Americans 'need not go
west of the Mississippi, the Lewis and Clark expedition has already been
there.'"
--- end excerpt ---

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48185452/ns/technology_and_science-space/>

        mark