Exploration, Of Course, Is Going To New

Most Of Our Competitor Nations Around The World Have A National Education System And America Is The Only Major Nation In The World That Operates Off Of Local School Boards. They Receive Very Little Direction From State Boards Of Education Or From The Nation. So Local School Boards Direct Basically What Happens And Too Often They're Not Willing To Track Or To Do The Supervision Of The Education System That Will Make It World Competitive.

We Thought That The Odds Of Things Working Ok Were Up In The Upper 90 Percent Or We Wouldn't Have Gone. But The - There Were Some Problems Cropped Up On The Flight But Was Able To Take Care Of Those Ok And - Although They Were Things That We Hadn't Really Trained That Much For. But It Was The Time Of The Cold War And So There Were Was A Lot Of Pressure On The - To Get Going And The Russians Were Claiming That They Were - Soviets Were Claiming They Were Ahead Of Us In Technology.

Exploration, Of Course, Is Going To New Places, But I Don't Think We Go To New Places Just Solely To Say: "well, We've Been There," And Come Back, Interesting Though It May Be. To Me, Each Time We Go Farther Into Space We Should Use That To Do Basic Research - Basic Research That Can't Be Done Before You Go There.

I Think Sometime We Will Go To Mars And I Think We'll Explore It With Humans Sometime, But I Think It's Really Wise To Do All The Robotic Exploration Ahead Of Time And Learn As Much As Possible. Once We Have Learned As Much As Possible With The Robots, Then That's The Time To Send People, And Let Them Then Continue The Research That The Robots Have Started.

That Whole Day [ Of The Space Flight] Is Very Vividly Impressed On My Memory Because It Was Such A New Experience. We Hadn't Done That Before. And Then I've Recalled It So Often Since Then I Think That It's A - It's Remained Very Vivid Over The Past 50 Years, Seems To Me Like About A Week Or Two Instead Of 50 Years.