  With a heavy heart I read urlLink the parting comments of Ed Lu , the astronaut who has been urlLink recording his deepest observations and posting them online, which is exactly a blog, whether or not he's aware of the term.
I can tell you as a person who supports (peaceful) space exploration with every bone of her body, it's very difficult to quantify the benefits of space in order to justify the expense to the tax payer. I find myself saying phrases like human endeavor and expanding our realm of existence directly brought about the Renaissance.
Ed phrased it well here: "I often hear that our space program is all about doing science. It is about much more than that. It is about opening up a new frontier for commerce, trade, and settlement, as well as doing science. The advent of ocean-going ships in the 1400s was a huge boon to science, not because we did scientific experiments on the ships, but because the ships took us to places we had never dreamed of before, and changed peoples lives by opening up new settlements and trade routes.
In the same way I think we will reap additional scientific benefits of the space station when we use it to help us learn how to send people to the far reaches of the Solar System. " He had this nice comment about China is space: "And speaking of space exploration, last week we had company for one day as China launched a manned spacecraft with astronaut Yang LiWei on board.
He was in space for less than one day, but it was nice to know we were sharing the sky with someone else. The more people in space, the better!
" 
