Baumgartner has a point!!

The man that jumped from edge of Space--disagrees with NASA budget He may have a point re: manned mars mission. IMO we should develop EO STS system first. No issue with Curiosity missions or similar ones. We can conduct manned mission later. We have much to do in EO. We have too many presidential advisors with no common sense re: Shuttle Termination!! Keith of NASAWatch disagrees with Baumgartner. The shuttle could support future manned missions to moon, mars, astroids as the EO transportation system. Previous administrations got us to this point--SLS , capsules, NO SHUTTLE!!! "A lot of guys they are talking about landing on Mars," he said. "Because [they say] it is so important to land on Mars because we would learn a lot more about our planet here, our Earth, by going to Mars which actually makes no sense to me because we know a lot about Earth and we still treat our planet, which is very fragile, in a really bad way. "So I think we should perhaps spend all the money [which is] going to Mars to learn about Earth. I mean, you cannot send people there because it is just too far away. That little knowledge we get from Mars I don't think it does make sense." Earlier this year Nasa landed the Curiosity rover on Mars. The plutonium powered robot will explore the surface of the Red Planet for upwards of 10 years at a cost of $2.5 billion (#1.5 billion). "That is tax money," Mr Baumgartner, 43, added. "People should decide 'are you willing to spend all this money to go to Mars?' I think the average person on the ground would never spend that amount of money - they have to spend it on something that makes sense and this is definitely saving our planet." Keith's note: I find it baffling, to say the least, that someone like commercial thrill seeker Felix Baumgartner - who just did something rather gutsy and improbable by jumping from a balloon 24 miles above Earth - thinks that sending humans to Mars is not possible because "it is just too far away". Really, Felix? How defeatist of you. As for the cost of what NASA does - the last time I checked, Felix was not an American taxpayer (you know, the people who actually pay those "taxes" for NASA) but rather, is an Austrian citizen. NASA doesn't get Austrian tax funding. It would seem, based on some simple Google searches, that Austria doesn't really have much of a space program to speak of. Nor do they seem to want one. Yet decades of polls clearly show that Americans really like their space program. So, Felix ... we'll run our space program the way we want to - and perhaps you should focus your space exploration criticism at home - where you pay your taxes? Maybe Austria can have a space program someday. Oh yes, Felix, since you raised the point: how many millions of dollars did your skydive project cost? How did it help to "save our planet"?