Hello again,
Dont get me started on the "space program" or should i say the "lack of space program"
Who can forget the mission to mars where Lockheed used English units and NASA used metric units, even though NASA had sent out a paper years earlier stating that metric units would be the standard from then on. The little spacecraft is now either crashed on the surface of Mars or is orbiting the Sun, and the money for that project can now be found down the drain. The REAL funny part is that during tests the error was not detected long before the launch date. So that's TWO mistakes in one which cost a lot of money.
I think there was another Mars crash recently too wasnt there from the European space program's attempt to land on Mars again. That's two swings and two misses for them now too.
I dont even want to talk about the Shuttle program which was a complete bungle on the part of it's management.
In fact, the only good thing i can say about the space program is that it may someday help us deflect an incoming asteroid and if they can do that they will prove their worthiness above and beyond any counter reasoning, but if they fail, they will have proved that man can not defend the planet properly when it's really needed. Going by current knowledge of this phenomenon, they will in fact be needed to perform this kind of defence sometime in the future so i HOPE they are working on this and can get it RIGHT the first time as they probably wont get a second chance.