Its always funny how the conservatives who are always so pro ‘free market’ when it comes to something like people’s health care, suddenly become in favor of big government projects and space agencies when it comes to space.

After hearing Senators talk about the government when it comes to health care, wouldn’t any mission be a suicide attempt by the pilots, since government can’t possibly do anything right?  And, surely the panel who picks the astronauts to fly in the doomed space craft built by incompetent bureaucrats in a socialist government agency, surely that panel should be called a ‘death panel’.

which, I would like to add, Mr. Luckovich is speaking to in this cartoon. “There’s
water in them craters”—> “there’s gold in them hills”. And the characters
pronouncement “One small step…” is cut short before he is able to utter “man”
showing how this discovery is paraded as a discovery for mankind (as most space
discoveries are) yet will most likely serve as an antagonist between humans,
and/or humans and nature.

I think that the something that needs to be said about this “water on the moon”
scenario that is not being said is the sickening question of space colonization and
ownership. The most profound consequence of this discovery is how it has re-
vitalized the idea of living settlements outside of the earth, which brings with it a
whole shit-storm of disturbing possibilities including the potential fight for who
owns/controls land outside of the earth, and the creation of a haven after we lay
waste to what little we have left environmentally here on earth.

gerard, Michio Kaku, nuclear physicist professor at CUNY Grad Center in NYC has been saying that space travel should be done by robot/unpeople flights, for years.  I think it’s nasty to be litering the moon and all the junk put into space already is amazing.  I saw articles, videos on the Guardian last summer, I think.  Kaku is on WBAI (archived, free, 90 days) and I support the “undo the coup” movement in re WBAI and Pacifica Radio Network, see http://www.takebackwbai.org).

I do like the cartoon in a childlike kind of way.

It’s been said, I think on DemocracyNow, that there are people resisting in what looks like militarization of space.

Something needs to be said that isn’t about this “water on the moon” scenario, and NASA will never say it because how, then, would they get their funding?  A sizeable number of reputable scientists are questioning the validity of such huge expense going into projects to sustain human beings in the hostile environments of space.  The costs are tremendous.  The exploration could better be done by robots, as robotic science is becoming ever more sophisticated—and is much cheaper than trying to support human space exploration.  Yet scarcely anybody knows this because NASA doesn’t particularly want people to know.  They like their tremendous government allotments to play with, not because it’s practical but simply because it’s intellectual “fun.”