[X] My Assistant

[dvandorn]

I'm not sure how to say this, but it has to do with the past, and it has to do with the future. So it belongs here.

We're all of us contemplating how we're going to react when one and then the other of the MERs die. But y'all are lucky --- as am I -- in this case. Because while the MERs will die, there will be thousands of exciting images coming in the next few years from MRO. And there will be new landings by Phoenix and MSL, which will provide all of us with fine armchair exploration experiences for many years to come.

When I was growing up, I followed Apollo like most of y'all follow the MERs. I vicariously experienced those first explorations of the Moon just as y'all vicariously experience these first robotic explorations of Mars. I looked forward to each new mission, soaking up the geology needed to understand the selenology that was happening. Examining each new landing site with all of the resources available to a teen-ager in the late '60s and early '70s, looking forward to each new landing, each new traverse.

But as of the end of 1972, no matter what might have been promised or speculated, it all went away. No more lunar exploration. No more visits to the magical place I had visited in spirit, if not in body.

We will all be able to follow the coming Mars explorations and can visit Mars again and again, in spirit if not in body. And that's a very good thing.

But just imagine if, once the last MER died, that was it. No more new vistas. No more new hills, rocks and craters. No more new insights.

Just a part of your soul that will always live in the past.

Just imagine that for a few moments, and then -- welcome to what my last three decades have been like...

So -- we're all lucky that these explorations of Mars will continue, with new vistas to see and new secrets to unravel. Let's all be sure we thank our various gods for that luck...

-the other Doug

[djellison]

Mark - SPDF - Im going to stop you all right there. How many times do I have to step in a stop people having the same damn argument again and again and again. Take it somewhere else. This is not the place. Mark - you are THIS close to having that post deleted and I will not hesitate to do so to future posts along a simple course.

Political debate will NOT take place here, and the manned vs unmanned debate will not take place here either - not because I side with one part of the arguemnt - but because it is a never ending, fundamentally pointless argument which neither side of which will ever compromise from.

I suggest you reaquaint yourselves with the rules.
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=boardrules

You have been warned.

Doug

(PS - well done to Stephen for directly and gratuitously ignoring my specific request in this post. Your post has been deleted as will future posts that discuss politics and the pointless manned-v-unmanned argument. )

[Stephen]

I suggest you reaquaint yourselves with the rules.
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=boardrules

You have been warned.

Doug

(PS - well done to Stephen for directly and gratuitously ignoring my specific request in this post. Your post has been deleted as will future posts that discuss politics and the pointless manned-v-unmanned argument. )

I did not ignore your post, gratuitously or otherwise. Mine took a while to compose and consequently I did not see yours until after I had posted mine.

I notice you have now deleted it. As moderator that is doubtless your prerogative. Whether such debates are pointless, however, is surely more a matter of opinion. You may well be sick of reading them. I'm rather tired of them myself. Nevertheless IMHO they are a legitimate subject of debate, especially on a board whose dominant subject is unmanned spaceflight yet where you as moderator-in-chief have nevertheless allowed a small corner where manned spaceflight issues can be discussed. To say that we can discuss UMSF in this corner and MSF in that corner yet never the twain shall meet (so to speak) is about as logical as saying thou shalt discuss unmanned missions to Europa here and unmanned missions to Titan there but thou shalt not discuss anywhere the virtues and vices of unmanned missions to Europa versus unmanned missions to Titan, (where I do not doubt there are as many passions & rants ready to be let loose as in the UMSF vs MSF debate ).

(Albeit I see from The Rules (1.4) that a (separate?) Manned Spaceflight forum exists. Can't be www.mannedspaceflight.com because that is already owned by a John Duncan and does not appear to be or have a forum anyway.)

UMSF.com happens to be a small civilised corner of the wild west of the Internet where civilised debate can go on amongst civilised people without risk of being flammed. I hope it stays that way and I support your efforts (and, of course, those of the other moderators) to keep it that way, but keeping it that way does not necessarily mean banning debate. Confining it to some appropriate corner is IMHO an equally legitimate management tool, much as you did with the topic of manned spaceflight generally. Without that space to allow steam to be let off in a civilised if sometimes passionate fashion you are confining yourself to the big stick approach: deleting posts and/or banning users. Those surely ought to be the tools of last resort.

It would also be shame to throw such debates out of UMSF.com, if only because that will probably merely pitch it back into the less civilised corners of the Net, where more heat than light can at times be generated and one could sometimes be forgiven for thinking the inmates had taken charge of the asylum.

======
Stephen