They can land a spacecraft on a comet, but...

Last week, after a nerve-wracking 7-hour descent, a miniature spacecraft drifted softly onto the surface of a comet more than 300 million miles from Earth. It was the first craft in history to land on a comet, and the apparently successful feat provoked hugs, cheers and joyous laughter in the control room in Germany.

To put the event in context, we asked our corps of Rapid Responders to complete this sentence: "Sure, we can land a probe on a comet, but …"

… we panic when we have to drive our cars in the snow!

— Teresa Larocque, Dallas

…b ut we are also capable of destroying this planet, its climate, its wildlife, and its wild places.

— Geoffrey James, Salem

… most of the population cannot locate states, countries and continents here on Earth, let alone a distant comet. Plus, the anti-science movement openly celebrates misinformation and manipulated doubt.

— Anita Blanchard, Salem

… we still can't feed our hungry, cure homelessness or curb the cost of higher education.

— Emily Duerfeldt, McMinnville

… can we put a module on there with Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi on there with it?

— Larry R. George, Salem

… space is so black and white and boring … more photos of Kim Kardashian!

— Gary Kertz, Salem

… feed the people and stop the wars.

— Ann Watters, Salem

... shouldn't we spend the money on improving lives instead? No. if we don't continue exploring, we will be limiting the possibilities for our descendants as the world's population increases.

— Wally Gutzler, Salem

…but we still can't fix sidewalks in Salem.

— Dwight Courtney

… we don't even have bus service on Sunday in Salem.

— Lois Stark, Salem

… we don't even try to make Earth a more peaceful, better planet. Such a shame.

— Tina Blacksmith, Salem

… there are no buts. This is a tremendous success by the space science community. The fact that other agencies have not had similar successes should take nothing away from the pride that this team deserves to feel. This ought to be an incentive, not an occasion for sour grapes.

— Don Snowdon, Salem

… we can't seem to find a path to world peace. Finite vital resources, whether water, food or other, will be fought over wherever they are in short supply. Economic justice seems much more important than technological achievement of little apparent practical gain.

— Michael Crossland, Salem

… let's give credit where credit is due: This is a huge joint international achievement using components from a rainbow of creators worldwide.

— Britta Lion Franz, Salem

… we should use that money to build houses for the homeless and feed the hungry.

— Kent Wilson, Salem

… will the newly elected Congress be able to agree on anything?

— David Thompson, Salem

... [will it] feed the homeless? Clean up politics? Fix the economy? Stop crime? Improve our schools and children's education? House the homeless? Stop being suckered in by the advertising media? End corporate greed? Return God to our lives? Curb medical costs?

— Claude Shinn, Salem

… it just doesn't have the cachet as a probe up the old backside.

— Woody Tiernan, Dallas

… we couldn't do it again in today's climate of PC, greed and CYA attitudes rather than "can do" attitudes. We can't even keep an armed man from running around the White House, or fire a bad public employee. People rise in responsibility to their level of incompetence.

— Loren Wright, Salem

… we cannot even get a decent person in the White House that cannot even prove where he was born, and our nation is supporting his extravagant lifestyle and he has become a dictator, while Congress fiddles and our country languishes in financial ruin like the Weimer Republic in Germany in the 1920s.

— William K. Dettwyler, Salem

… we can't get rid of a governor with a bucket load of issues he's bollixed up, and a legislature headed so far left if Oregon were flat, they'd fall off the edge. In other words, is this probe really important? Answer: No!

— Cheryl Eby, Salem

…we (the United States of America, not me) continue to land over 3 million people disproportionately from communities in color in prison for mostly non-violent alleged offenses based on racial profiling targeting queer and trans folk.

— Jonathan David Grindell, Salem

… we can't seem to get Oregon to elect anything but Democrats to statewide offices except east of the mountains.

— Jim Jaqua, Keizer

… can we: a) motivate 90 percent of our citizens to vote? b) defeat the African AIDS or Ebola epidemics in this decade? c) achieve world peace in our lifetime? I think not. Technological challenges in space exploration have fewer messy human factors to overcome.

— Ken Simila, Salem