PR mission unneeded

I have a perfectly good gun-culture—which enabled the guy in Louisville to kill those people—letter written and one praising John Brummett for his column about racism, given his previously stated position, as I recall it, that he avoids the topic because racists won’t change and it just makes them mad.

But nooo … I have to send in one calling out NASA for its “Humans in Space” public relations program.

I think NASA is great. I’m glad we are exploring outer space. But I believe most, if not all, manned (peopled?) space missions are PR-based. I believe it is seldom necessary to send humans up there to operate the instruments that can do everything that needs doing without human hands touching them. Whatever the stated reasons, the underlying reason, I believe, is to capture the imagination of “the public,” who, I believe, live vicariously through our astronauts. The more danger the better.

President Kennedy loved manned missions. Walter Cronkite loved them, and most politicians and journalists, especially the TV ones, are basically required to ooh and ah over them. They are PR gold.

I felt this way before those people were blown up soon after their rocket lifted off in the mid-1980s. In my opinion, they died in service to NASA PR.

By the way, I think the idea of sending people to Mars is crazy. Colonizing Mars or even the moon is crazier. When I say crazy, I mean woo-woowoo, booga-wooga-wooga, waka-waka-waka, cray-cray, bonkers. We have so many real human mission needs for those billions (trillions after the overruns) of dollars.

Those “one giant leap for mankind” guys are all the astronaut heroes we need, in my opinion.

HOWELL MEDDERS Fayetteville