NASA Should Expand Travel to Space

Re “Tito Wins Praise From Russian Crew,” May 5: NASA’s bureaucratic mind-set cannot seem to “get it” that for space exploration to expand, commercial and entrepreneurial ventures need to be encouraged, not fought. Instead, NASA seems to be willing to let the whole space program collapse, so long as it maintains a monopoly of the remnants.

I have a modest proposal: Replace NASA director Daniel S. Goldin with Dennis Tito. Certainly Tito is qualified, being a wildly successful businessman and an honest-to-God rocket scientist. NASA clearly needs new thinking, and this latest display proves it won’t come from within.

Kevin Murphy

Los Angeles

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It’s shameful that Tito got a chance to fly to the International Space Station on a $20-million joy ride. Tito’s flight, in my view, served no purpose for space exploration.

Sending one of America’s finest--a teacher--into space would restore national pride and purpose to our manned space program. NASA needs to reinstate the Teacher in Space program and fly a teacher this year. I believe it’s the right thing to do.

Barbara Morgan, a schoolteacher from Idaho who was Christa McAuliffe’s backup in 1986, was selected by NASA in January 1998 as the first educator mission specialist. Morgan has been waiting patiently for 14 years to fly on a shuttle mission.

Godspeed, Barbara Morgan, and touch the future for us all!

Rick Schreiner

Balboa Island

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There’s no need to spend $20 million to look out the window of space station Alpha or enjoy many other benefits of a trip to space. For over 15 years, NASA TV has offered free, continuous coverage of all NASA space missions, and this channel is finally available on all satellite dish systems.

True, 24-hour video from the space station hasn’t been achieved yet, but in the snippets I’ve seen there’s a lot of bouncing off walls and other fun stuff. Coincidentally, live station video was down for the week that Tito was up (the coverage we did see came from Russia, not NASA), but we can expect great mission coverage starting with the next space shuttle mission. Between missions, you can also hear space-to-ground communications with Alpha, see Earth views from space and watch various other space and science programming. It’s like watching “Mission Impossible” play out for real!

Gary Davis

Culver City