Posted 3/28/2004 12:33:00 PM by Douglas

Does Steven Weinberg get paid by the word? It certainly appears that way judging from his latest ad hominem attack on the manned spaceflight program. I'm going to have to agree with Keith on this one: Weinberg started with the "manned spaceflight is worthless" premise and worked his way backwards.

Forgetting for a second that Bush is in the middle of a uphill battle for a second term as president, let's take a look at his January 14th statement about returning to the Moon and on to Mars. The man can barely read the teleprompter, so forget about any grandiose vision for science, technology, NASA, or any other polysyllabic enterprise. He's after what every politician is after. Votes. And wouldn't you know it, some swing states critical to his reelection, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, are also the home to some pretty big NASA centers. Coincidence? Not a chance. So what's it all about, the money? Starving orphans and underfunded head-start programs?

But as long as the public is so averse to being taxed, there will be even less money either to ameliorate these societal problems or to do real scientific research if we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on sending people into space.

There's a shocker: It's always about the money. I'm beginning to bore myself with this rant, so I'll keep it short. NASA gets less than one penny out of every tax dollar, and the manned spaceflight program receives about half that. I'm not trying to imply that NASA doesn't waste its share of money. Far from it. But if you're concerned with the bottomless money pits where the government wastes your hard earned tax dollar, NASA is somewhere on page three.

Would another Lunar mission bring back legitimately viable science? Would the development of a new spacecraft create commercially successful spin-off industries? There are many good questions about our future in space, but these aren't those questions. Whatever the reason: freeze-dried ice cream, beating the Russians, immense national pride and identity, Tang. There were compelling factors that started us to the moon 40 years ago. Sometimes just going is all the motivation you need, and in this political climate, we're going to have to do a lot better than that this time to get off the ground. But just because robots are cheaper doesn't make it a very compelling argument not to go.

Using an almost insignificant portion of our national budget, America can do things that no nation on the planet is capable of achieving. That's got to be worth something, isn't it?