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Article: Human spaceflight.(Forum)(two comments on John M. Logsdon's article on space policy)
- Article from:
- Issues in Science and Technology
- Article date:
- March 22, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 National Academy of Sciences. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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John M. Logsdon's "A Sustainable Rationale for Human Spaceflight" (Issues, Winter 2004) is an invitation to begin public discussions that can lead to a more successful space program that will be a source of the national pride he invokes.
The problem is that the declaration of President George W. Bush that Logsdon quotes in his first paragraph, "Our journey into space will go on," has rallied few scientists, engineers, or laypeople. Many scientists still see no compelling reason for humans in space. (Even in the 1980s, the Nobel Laureate physicist Edward Purcell remarked to me that the energy needed to lift a person out of Earth's gravitational well would feed him ...