The Space Shuttle Atlantis landed safely for the final time early this morning. NASA is discontinuing shuttle expeditions.
There’s a nostalgia about the shuttles being retired that has caused the conservative blog-and-twitter-sphere to lose its collective ability to reason.
My fellow conservatives wail about how Obama has “gutted” this oh-so-American program and forever docked space missions. Yawn. What they seem to forget is that a government that can’t balance its earthly budgets has no business running up bills further afield in the universe.
Not to mention, the reasons for space exploration as they existed in the 60′s no longer exist today. The Cold War is over, and with it our need to a) launch bombs from space, b) set up a space shield to protect us from the other guy launching bombs at us, and c) find a new planet to live on in case we nuke this one beyond all repair. Space exploration is no longer of military import, and since running the military is one of the ONLY things the federal government should be doing, it’s time for them to get out of the space race.
If anything more is going to come of space exploration, it will – and it should – come from private enterprise, like Sir Richard Branson and his ilk.
We must remember that in the science of oceanography, more good came from Jacques Cousteau and Robert Ballard than from any government program. And yes, Ballard’s exploration of the Titanic was funded by the US Navy, but he approached them and asked them to underwrite his mission, with the bulk of the burden being shouldered by him and his scientific cohorts.
Space, like the ocean, is a dream best explored by dreamers – not by bureaucrats. If we can’t trust the government to run the DMV efficiently, why on earth are conservatives so desperate to save an archaic space program? Time to turn it over to the private sector, to continue the job started by the Cold War.
Why is the Canadian health system so sucessful
because most Canadians live within 200 miles of the US boarder
God help the Canadians if we can not re[eal Obama Care
I was in my twenties when the US was building a space program. Almost no employes, seat of the pants technology and they planted a flag on the moon. Today’s NASA is an overgrown bureaucracy that can’t find its back pocket. We could do great things on almost no budget back then. Today we use wheelbarrows of money to miss deadlines, or create missiles to kill civilians in the name of spreading democracy; how low we have fallen in only fifty years.
I would like to start a new space program. Please nominate a so-called leader to be the first person exiled from the planet Earth. I will volunteer 5% of my pay to fund this program.