Every leader, from the Romans on
down to today's knows or knew the value of keeping the "governed"
entertained. This "new" space initiative, IMHO, is nothing more that an
attempt to get our minds off of the falacy of Iraq and its missing WMDs
and the equally missing Osama.
More worrisome to me is the parallel
to what happened to the Russians when they tried to keep up with Ronald
Regan as he spent more and more or, at least pretended to spend more
and more, on defense.
Like it or not, America is broke. We
are out of money to spend on stuff like this and China, for one, knows
it. As their economy becomes stronger, mostly due to the imbalance of
trade, they have announced an aggressive space exploration program and
Bush has risen to the bait.
As it stands right now, we have
saddled our children and grandkids with the unbelievable debt of our
social security system and now we are going to bury them with the
needless expense of manned space exploration.
My .02
Barney Bettilyon
_______________________________________________
Utah-Astronomy mailing list
Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com
http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com