Fly me to the moon?

Dear editor:

NASA is eager to resume United States spaceflights to the moon. Russia has expressed an interest in going along. China is planning its own mission. The European Community, Japan, India, and even Brazil, are also going through their own lunar desires.

The United States explored the moon on several manned missions between 1969 and 1972.

There is no need to go back. I seriously doubt that the moon has changed too much in 35 years.

Those manned space flights were fine, but the era of lunar exploration is over and should not be brought back to life.

Our government never seems content with focusing on problems and issues here at home.

If we are not sending someone abroad to shoot other humans, we are shooting humans into space to send back information that we either already have or have no use for.

A lot of time and money is being wasted on exploring the solar system. For hundreds of years, man was content with looking at space with a telescope. Now, we spend millions of dollars sending people, satellites, and other unmanned craft into orbit.

Before we concern ourselves with what lies above (and we should be concerned with only one thing above-God's heaven), we should concern ourselves with the problems we face at home- child abuse, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, AIDS, pollution, the vanishing family farm and disappearing middle class, how to find alternatives to oil and gasoline, how to preserve our natural and historical heritage, and how to find insurance coverage for the nearly 50 million Americans without insurance.

The other nations who are interested in the moon face similar problems on earth. Russia, China, Japan, Brazil, and India have problems equal ours or worse.

Now is not the time to be shooting people and rockets into space. Now is the time to look for solutions to the problems of real, live, breathing people right here on our own planet.

Let's leave outer space alone and concentrate on humankind.

Sincerely,

David Shipp

Nevada