Just Do It

Today, in the first bark of a week-long tirade, the Houston Chronicle said we're in space with the Shuttle and International Space Station just to be there and to maintain NASA's budget (which is probably true), and they blamed it mostly on JFK for sending us to the moon just to beat the Russians -- without having any plan for what to do next.

I think they have a good point that dithering bureaucrats and congresses have always chosen the least that could be done once we got to the moon. But I don't think we would ever have made it to the moon if Kennedy hadn't been so keen to trounce the Soviet Union -- just like we're not getting to Mars since there's no political reason to do it.

They seem to say that what we need to do is scrap the Shuttle and the ISS so the money can go to little robot Mars-buggies -- which is baloney. What we need to do is use the Shuttle and ISS to do what they were originally intended for: building a way station for going back to the moon and exploring the rest of the solar system.

Instead visionless government clerks and pork barrel politicians have simply reduced these two technological marvels to a very expensive flying truck and a celestial Motel 6.

Gnomon