Loss of Mars Lander

Re “Mars Scientists Running Out of Options,” Dec. 7: Abandoning the exploration of Mars due to the loss of the Mars Polar Lander would ignore the lessons of history. It is true that since 1996 two of the last four probes our country has sent to the Red Planet have been unsuccessful. Yet Columbus lost a third of his fleet in discovering America, while during Ferdinand Magellan’s famous circumnavigation of the world, only one of his five ships completed the journey.

Had the ancient explorers given up, many would still believe the world is flat and the U.S. would never have come into existence. Our ancestors believed that the potential gains of new discoveries were worth the cost and so should we.

ALEX RICCIARDULLI

Los Angeles

* Earth to NASA. About this “faster, better, cheaper” idea. Maybe you’d better rethink cheaper.

BILL SMITH

Malibu

* The Mars Lander is like a relative to whom you loan a sum of money. They never call, they never write and they seem to disappear from the face of the Earth!

JERRY BARUCH

Los Angeles

* All right, you scientists in Pasadena. It is time for you to pick up your toys and go home and do something more constructive with your life. If you want to study Mars, you should do it in your spare time and for your own money. Personally, I couldn’t care less whether there are traces of water on another planet.

ALBERT JAKOBSEN

Arcadia

* The real failure of the Mars mission lies in the fact that, instead of curing the diseases that kill us, or fixing the schools that fail our children, or caring for the elderly that we will someday become, we are sinking $356.8 million into the black hole of a space program that has been proving, time and again, that if it’s intelligent life we’re seeking, we should start with Earth. Now that would be a “mission.”

DAWN O’LEARY

Glendale

* Scientists are not getting much support on their attempts to gather information on their mission to Mars. We think they are still getting information, even with their current setback with the Mars Polar Lander project. Even if things haven’t gone as planned, we think scientists should get support for their efforts.

There has been criticism over the $356.8-million project, but who remembers that three weeks ago Americans spent, in a five-day period, $209.9 million attending movies?

DANIEL CRUZ

PATRICK ORTEGA

JOSHUA MANCILLA

Upwards Center Elementary

Los Angeles