"A Generation Lost In Space"

So I keep hearing about Bush's new space program or whatever you want to call it. Send folks back to the moon. Build a colony up there. Then--Mars. It's as though he were pulling his policy from 1950s serialized sci-fi comics.

I remember a few years ago, I was listening to a professor in our Sci-Fi/Fantasy class talk about the possibility of having a moon colony or whatnot. I'd wondered about it myself--having read some of the old 1950s and '60s childrens' books that figured we'd all be living on the moon by this time, I wondered why you never heard anything about the possibility after about, oh, say Apollo 11. The professor basically just told me that it was a pipedream and that no one seriously thought we were going to do that sort of thing anymore.

Either I was lied to, or no one told Bush this.

It all does seem rather fanciful, though. Almost laughable, even. I have to wonder--we have enough trouble getting things right here on Earth. Do we really want to go to someplace more cramped, more dangerous, and more likely to go *ka-BOOOM!* if we screw something up? Not to mention all the freakin' money it would cost? Money that could be spent better elsewhere, say, providing better educational funding. Or figuring out a way to get along with everyone (here's a hint--stop starting wars with everyone who looks at us crosseyed! Especially if they're yetis).

But ultimately, I don't think anyone's going to go along with the idea, especially Congress. When we can't even keep a robot on Mars from getting cut off from us, do we want to chance it with people?

Unless, of course, they let me pick the people we send. In which case, I'd be very happy to chance it. Maybe even stack the chances in favor of Mars.

~chaos cricket

Song of the Moment: Moxy Fruvous, "You Will go to the Moon"