SpaceX Starship at Voyager Station:Station Construction

I once asked my father-in-law if he remembered the first airplane he saw. The story he told me came from an experience when he was a boy in Ukraine and an airplane passed over his village. He and his family didn't know that such a thing as an airplane had been invented. The one he described was a Wright-Patterson biplane with the pilot seated on the wing. He and the other boys ran as far as they could following it and waving to the pilot who waved back. My father-in-law lived to see men walk on the Moon. You and I were born before the jet age and will likely live (if we're lucky) to see the beginnings of this new space age begin.

CPT Jack Durish - I hope so Jack!

Sgt Chris Cornejo - Japan has benefited greatly from the technology developed during our space exploration program and has been launching their own for several years now. Yes, we have many issues to fix here at home and space exploration is helping those as well. Satellite imagery is helping map the oceans and identify problem spots. One of the biggest problems is that we can't see the problem until we get far enough away to take it all in. For example, people have been attempting to study weather and climate with a very limited set of data points. For example, there are weather stations scattered across the world, most collecting observed data once each day and unobserved (automated) observations hourly. There are far more of them in developed nations than undeveloped or underdeveloped nations. There are some at sea on moored and unmoored buoys. Ships also report observations. Still, there are hardly enough of them to provide a true picture of what is going on at any moment, certainly not enough to predict weather or climate change (despite what all the pseudo-scientists claim). However, with satellite images and telemetry, we have greatly expanded our database. We can now predict weather with far greater accuracy (and the savings in avoiding or preparing for severe weather numbers in the trillions of dollars). We need more to truly have any chance of predicting climate change.

I agree with satellite advances that have contributed to better understanding and insightful information. The space missions that concern me are the billion dollar probes sent to explore our Solar system. While Niel Armstrong had a safe walk on the moon there were places in Los Angeles that were unsafe to walk. The answers to our problems on earth are simple and don’t require billion dollar space missions. If your home had a leaky roof would you spend time looking around the neighborhood, county, or state looking for a solution? I have had two relatives that retired from the space industry. One worked at JPL during the first Mars Landing that provided pictures. Her daughter just retired from another part of the NASA program. She was a rocket scientist and her daughter now works for SpaceX in Los Angeles. I admire their careers and family drive to excel. Do you remember the Hubble needing a repair shortly after it deployed? It was all a planned recovery mission to test the ability of Space responsiveness for future missions. While NASA goes out millions of miles away from the earth spending billions of dollars there was trash found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench last year. What’s more important to you? Does it help you to know about another Nebula, Galaxy, or black hole? I enjoyed amateur astronomy with my daughters when they were in elementary school. We invited the whole class to look at the comet Hale-Bopp through my ten in reflector telescope. Space is amazing I was able to find about 25 objects from the Messier catalogue without gps tracking and alignments. I learned one thing that I would like to mention. “It never ends!” I had to quit spending money on equipment that was needed for my family issues first. Home should be first. Our planet should be first. The sun is 92.7 million miles away, but some scientists round it up to 93 million miles away. Did that help anybody? Deep Space exploration is a waste of money. I don’t want to live on Mars, Venus, or any other planet. I like it here. On a planet that circles the sun at 6,600 miles per hour. With an atmosphere combined of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% of all other gases. Of which includes a small amount of a deadly gas called Carbon Dioxide. We can’t live without it and at the same time if the amount has a substantial increase above 0.03% it can kill us. I am more worried about this than finding more Galaxies, planets, nebulas, or anything else in deep space. I did however find an interesting article about two satellites that travel together and maintain a distance of 137 miles apart. They call it “GRACE” for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. The mission was for another purpose than detecting underground water supplies, but it was discovered that our world drinking water supplies are dwindling without replenishment. Sir, thank you for the respectful dialogue. If you have more to talk about I will except it as learning something new. Respectfully, C. Cornejo. CPT Jack Durish

Sgt Chris Cornejo - If we are truly concerned with climate change (and we should be), we need to focus on the engine that drives all weather and climate, the Sun. We need to understand it far better than we do now. As for resources, we are surrounded by a wealth of resources. There are asteroids containing waste quantities of everything including water. I'll grant that government funded space exploration stumbled upon these treasures, and at great expense. But they don't have a clue of how to mine them efficiently and economically. Indeed, NASA's budget is even more today than when we were funding manned exploration. What the hell are they spending it on? Waste. However, the next phase is space exploitation and it will be accomplished by private business for profit. And we'll all profit. One of our greatest vulnerabilities today lies in the fact that China possesses the world's known resources of rare earth elements which are critical to many of the technologies that we need to ween ourselves off of fossil fuels. We need to change that dynamic and finding an asteroid or two containing such elements will do the trick. An asteroid that recently passed earth was analyzed and found to possess hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of platinum. Platinum is another scarce resource used in manufacturing electronics. BTW, if you are hoarding platinum as an investment, you may want to unload it before someone brings down several trillions of dollars worth and makes it cheaply available. Just one more thing that you may want to consider. You and I are the beneficiaries of our antecedents who came to America and thus provided us with this world's last great opportunity for prosperity. I don't know about you, but my destiny would have been limited to mining coal in the Carpathian Mountains and freedom would not even have existed in my vocabulary. As much as our lives were determined by our antecedent's life as a seafaring people, our descendants destiny will be determined by our life as a spacefaring people. We will explore and populate distant planets and solar systems while this one will die. Granted, I'm talking about millions, maybe billions of years and countless generations hence. If lucky, I'll live to meet my great-grandchildren. I doubt if I'll meet their children, but I think of them. They will be my family as much as my children and grandchildren are my family today. Maybe I'm strange, or at least unusual in this way, but I want to contribute to that legacy. Happily, no one is asking me to pay for it as I helped pay for some clown making footprints on the Moon. Indeed, I will profit from their efforst. So will you. Thus, our discussion is not only respectful, but also academic.

I lived in the Ukraine for 5 months and I remember the Carpathian Mountains. I was in a City called L’VIV or also known as L’VOV. It’s a long story, but you have an interesting heritage. I do not know the topography of that whole mountain range. It appears to me that you could have some Russian heritage? I am 3rd generation American. One of my grandfathers fled from his brutal father in Mexico who would hang him and his brother and pummeled them with stones as punishment. He arrived here with a donkey in 1920. My other grandfather left the Philippines for a better life. He was smuggled on a Chinese boat and stayed in Hawaii for a few years. I am sorry I am off the topic. I agree about how science and technology can offer answers and solutions to issues we face now and in the future. The deep space missions are not needed. When astronauts travel they need take water, oxygen, and equipment to protect them from radiation of the sun. That all comes from earth. Our atmosphere is our protection. We have the best regulatory agencies in the world. OSHA, EPA, and others that have effectively made a difference to help protect our environment. China and other industrial nations are behind and probably don’t even entertain the idea of regulations. I have benefited from my grandparents looking for something better. You are correct about exploring to make things better. I can not argue against your point because then it would make me a hypocrite. I acknowledge advancement is required to live and leave a legacy. My thinking is based on root cause analysis. Why do we need another planet? We have carved out in history that we can’t take care of the one we have now. I want deep exploration funding to be spent here. Jumping ships is not the answer. I love dogs, but our pets get better health care than some humans. This is my example of why we need to fix our attitudes and awareness. We can’t see the forest because the trees are in the way. I believe we should cease and desist sending billions of dollars into an empty void. We are made from this earth. There is not one identifiable element that is foreign to the science periodic table of elements. This is a fact for humans and animals. This is our home and we are destroying it. I read an article that stated the train has already crashed into the station regarding global warming and climate change. I personally believe there is still time to restore our ecological system. I also believe it will not happen. We are to busy looking the other way and want to ignore the big white elephant in the room. I want change here where we belong. What tangible improvement can you tell me about from deep space exploration that has benefited us? Maybe a few things, but definitely not worth the bang for our buck. We have whales beached with stomachs full of plastic bags. The same with sea turtles. The Great Barrier Reef is on its way out. Can we change this with deep space exploration? You know the answer. CPT Jack Durish