[X] My Assistant

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Sputnik at 50 !

[dvandorn]

There *are* no Walter Cronkites or even (shudder) Jules Bergmans out there today. There are no mainstream media commentators who champion space exploration, or who even seem to "get it" at even the most fundamental levels.

All we have are Miles O'Brien on CNN (who gets excited about these things, but who will abandon that excitement if it means getting a promotion to something beyond "science correspondent") and occasionally Keith Olbermann. Beyond that, space is treated in the media as an "amusing little story" at best and "a horrible waste of money" at the worst.

The only media outlet championing space exploration right now is the Discovery Channel and its myriad associated networks. While they mostly do a good job, their contributions are few and far between -- we get new programming, on average, of once a *year* (during "space week") and then spend the rest of the year (i.e., the *other* 51 weeks) watching the same repeats over and over. Or watching absolutely *no* programming about space exploration. At all.

Even NASA TV gets to where it re-runs the same films over and over. Yes, you get some fine little bits and pieces from them, including press conferences and such, but in terms of historical films, there are at least 50 hours worth of films covering early space achievements -- and we get to see about four hours' worth of them, repeated over and over and over.

Forget a balloon flight -- we here need to be setting up our own cable network!!!

-the other Doug