Don't bring Chernobyl into this. The Chernobyl reactor design was considered unsafe fifty years and three design generations ago, and nobody in the West was building those designs even then. What caused the disaster was that the managers decided to remove multiple layers of safety devices and controls to run unscheduled and unapproved tests, and when the plant caught fire, the response teams had no protective gear, and little equipment to put the fire out. Had the same disaster occurred in the West (assuming that the NRC had approved a basically unsafe reactor design in the first place), the personnel and equipment available to the response personnel would have allowed them to put the fire out without the huge radiation dispersal that occurred at Chernobyl. Additionally, were you to visit the area today, you would see that the area has recovered from what damage was done, and that the local flora and fauna have long since returned to their original state (no more mutant trees or critters than could be statistically expected in most of the world). If I said something empirically wrong, please provide references to research from reputable sources (such as UN science groups) based directly on data.

Another reason to go to Mars is just to explore it. There's no way to know what's there until men start exploring the surface and subsurface of Mars. A distinct possibility exists that certain metals that are rare on Earth could be found on Mars in such forms as to make mining for those metals and shipping them back to Earth profitable.

True. My college freshman engineering class sent a balloon up 110,000 feet and recovered it, all for less than 250 USD. What would be newsworthy would be if the group built the equipment for a low cost, or achieved an extraordinary altitude. However, I am glad to see high school students taking an interest in engineering and science. Having worked on a similar project myself, I can say that pulling off this kind of project requires significant planning and teamwork, and I congratulate the students for their successful effort.

So I would be giving my personal information to the government so that I could have more privacy? Like the government doesn't know enough about me already.

The problem with creating such a device is not the technological factors, but rather the ergonomic factors. The reason a mouse-keyboard combo gives you such control is that your desk it at just the right height to work at. It is harder to work with controls if they are at waist height instead of mid-torso height.

The technologies that "replaced" blacksmiths has allowed them to take a time that blacksmiths used to spend making mundane things like hinges and nails, and spend that time making beautiful wrought iron fences, for example.

Obsolescence is the result of progress. How many carriage manufacturers still exist? When automobiles were first introduced, they were direct competitors to carriages. However, since automobiles have proven themselves to be better than carriages, the carriages have become obsolete, and therefore are no longer produced, except as historical replicas. The carriage manufacturers all went out of business or converted to building automobiles. When a new technology replaces an old technology, businesses must adapt, or go out of business. Please not that a few companies still produce carriages. Physical media will always have a special place. Everyday reading may become increasingly digital, but digitizing ordinary books allows special books to have prominence on the physical bookshelf.

Haven't you heard of what SpaceX has been doing? They already have contracts to send probes to the Moon, as well as launching satellites into Earth orbit.