To the Moon! An Editorial...
Earlier this week GOP candidate Newt Gingrich, best known for being the first Speaker of the House to resign from that office in disgrace years ago, said that he promised to have a functioning moonbase by the end of his second term.
I didn't give the news item much thought when I heard it. First, I was sick. But second, it was said by a GOP presidential candidate, and by definition, virtually everything said by such people is not worth hearing.
The problem, however, is such things are not worth hearing from any politician.
Gingrich is not taking us to the Moon. He knows it, and anyone with any brains knows it as well.
Gingrich is not taking us to the Moon. Romney is not taking us to the Moon (despite an open letter written to Romney on that subject by such luminaries as Bob Crippen, first space shuttle pilot, Gene Cernan, the last man on the Moon, Michael Griffin, former NASA administrator, and Tufts University Professor William Martel). Paul is not taking us to the Moon.
Obama is not taking us to the Moon.
The United States is not going back to space. Period. This country no longer has the ability or attention span to accomplish something like that. Too much Lady Gaga, and not enough National Geographic. Too much Twitter, and not enough LiveJournal. It doesn't fit in with a politician's expected term of office, and it doesn't fit in with a capitalist's bottom line budget analysis.
The UK has cut science funding to the bone. The US has flatlined NSF funding for the next decade.
Private companies? Well, private companies may be our saving grace, but given accountant's myopic viewpoints on bottom line balancing, frankly, I'm not going to hold my breath.
It may very well turn out that those of us between our mid-40s and mid-60s turned out very, very lucky. We saw the Apollo program. We may not see its like again. For the rest of us, US manned space flight may turn into what I saw on the commuter rail last Sunday headed to Natick - a child's die-cast fantasy toy.
Pessimistic? Maybe. But prove me wrong. I'm nearly 47. We don't have a hell of a lot of time. And we've wasted so much of it.
I didn't give the news item much thought when I heard it. First, I was sick. But second, it was said by a GOP presidential candidate, and by definition, virtually everything said by such people is not worth hearing.
The problem, however, is such things are not worth hearing from any politician.
Gingrich is not taking us to the Moon. He knows it, and anyone with any brains knows it as well.
Gingrich is not taking us to the Moon. Romney is not taking us to the Moon (despite an open letter written to Romney on that subject by such luminaries as Bob Crippen, first space shuttle pilot, Gene Cernan, the last man on the Moon, Michael Griffin, former NASA administrator, and Tufts University Professor William Martel). Paul is not taking us to the Moon.
Obama is not taking us to the Moon.
The United States is not going back to space. Period. This country no longer has the ability or attention span to accomplish something like that. Too much Lady Gaga, and not enough National Geographic. Too much Twitter, and not enough LiveJournal. It doesn't fit in with a politician's expected term of office, and it doesn't fit in with a capitalist's bottom line budget analysis.
The UK has cut science funding to the bone. The US has flatlined NSF funding for the next decade.
Private companies? Well, private companies may be our saving grace, but given accountant's myopic viewpoints on bottom line balancing, frankly, I'm not going to hold my breath.
It may very well turn out that those of us between our mid-40s and mid-60s turned out very, very lucky. We saw the Apollo program. We may not see its like again. For the rest of us, US manned space flight may turn into what I saw on the commuter rail last Sunday headed to Natick - a child's die-cast fantasy toy.
Pessimistic? Maybe. But prove me wrong. I'm nearly 47. We don't have a hell of a lot of time. And we've wasted so much of it.