Reply #41: In a way, I am just being testy. But I don't believe this will work ...

[struggle4progress]

at any reasonable price, and I'm always leery of huge technical projects, which always seem to encounter unexpected problems, including cost overruns. The superconducting supercollider was going to be a bargain, and I guess the plug got pulled on it when it was costing ten times what was estimated. We heard long tales about the glorious space station fifteen years ago, but it seems to have produced essentially no meaningful science and its boosters now seem eager to abandon it in favor of an equally unimportant manned Mars mission. "Space elevator" looks to me like as much of a boondoggle as "Star Wars" missile defense.

I say: stick with smaller scale unmanned space exploration for the time being. We can learn so much from it, we're having trouble managing all the data.