IOWA CITY, Iowa - Physicist James A. Van Allen, a leader in space 
exploration who discovered the radiation belts surrounding the Earth 
that now bear his name, died Wednesday. He was 91.

        http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obit_van_allen

Article gives a good and interesting summary of his career and most 
people of technical bent will probably find it worth looking at.

The discovery of the "Van Allen Belts" using instrumentation that he 
was responsible for providing was a fortuitous accident which gave him 
lifelong fame but he was a top class researcher and engineer quite 
independent of this.

__________________

JVA was a staunch advocate of space research but was strongly against 
manned missions in almost any form. I guess you can't get everything 
right :-).

[[    I agree that in many cases Robotic missions make most sense and 
that "some*" current manned space efforts offer questionable value for 
money. But, "it's obvious :-)" [tm] that in some** extremely important 
and significant cases manned (and/or womaned) missions make most 
sense. It's "horses for courses" and there are course that robots, as 
yet, cannot run.]]



        Russell McMahon


*        0% <= some <= 100%

** some ~= 0% but >> 0%.

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