All Space Flight is Important

This past week has not been a good one for space exploration's public image. Two rockets down, with one man dead. Frankly, considering the vehicle, I can't believe the second man on that ship lived. I'm sure it's caused a lot of people to question the validity and the entire point of space travel. To the regular person, it doesn't seem worth it. I know I've talked about this plenty before, and I'm sure I'll talk about it again. SpaceShipTwo was a space tourism vessel, and in terms of importance, well, there are more important things. However, I don't want people associating that with all space flight.

This is an article about how in a few years, NASA will be bringing most of its planetary space probe missions to an end. After that, we'll be left with very little in the way of new and exciting information about the planets. I've noticed a picture of Titan's lakes circulating through the internet today, in a few years, spectacular images like this will be no more. Manned space flight is important, but so is unmanned. Space probes go where we cannot, they can go further, longer, and they can do it for far less money. Landing a man on Mars may get all the press, but sending a probe to sail on Ligeia Mare, or to drill through Europa's icy crust to the ocean beneath would be just as epic a milestone, and would probably return even more spectacular results.

In an unrelated bit of news, I've got a couple of longer, more involved posts in the works, and hopefully I can get them out this week. They'll be different from my normal fare, so...yes. That will be happening, I guess.

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