“What did humanity do?”
“They went to the moon. Then they died.”

That’s our tombstone. All your fa**ety socialism and health care and windmills won’t even be in the stupid history books.

Now, picture a nuke coming straight at you from Frank J’s private space pad on that blue marble. Actually, the Japanese thought they saw just that, and they crashed the space ship trying to dodge it:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090629.html

Anyway, NASA has this big Constellation program, and says the Next Giant Leap Has Begun (TM):
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/index.html

I dunno. I think we need another macho Captain-Kirk type and some huge, loud rockets like the Saturn V to generate some real excitement again. And maybe we should take away all of NASA’s computers and tell them they’ll have to dress in formal 1960s-era nerd suits and use slide rules until the moonbase is up, running, and turning a profit. Their brains will be busting out of their ears as they work hard to get their toys and cool back — they’ll probably come up with so much good stuff trying, we’ll end up on Saturn within the year. (Dibs on that big chunk of one of the bigger rings over there!)

When the schools stopped teaching science and started teaching environmentalist dogma, we lost.
When scientists stopped pushing logic and wonder and started pushing atheism, arrogance, and morality-free experimentation, we lost.
When we stopped having children and started celebrating the rights of the illegal trespasser, even if he was an Islamic Jihadi bent on our destruction, we lost.

Dr. Robert Zubrin, head of the Mars Society, has an excellent speech that he alludes to at the end of his Energy Victory or Mars Society speeches. Unfortunately, I’m having problems finding it online, but it is basically this – there are two views of the future of humanity. In the future where resources are finite and oil is the source of energy, then every baby born is a competitor, every nation is an enemy, and the future is going to consist of more people fighting over fewer resources. I a future with space development and ethanol fuel, resources are unlimited, every baby born is a possible future inventor, and the future consists of more people cooperating to gain more resources. Here is one of his speeches, heavily edited, but it will give you some idea about him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0O2YZwSkgM

Where’s DD Harriman when you need him?

I do think that the government needs to get it’s butt out of all space programs. They should do like they did with the airline industry and help people get themselves into space. Right now, they aren’t doing anything legitimate except to get in the way of actual real progress.

Besides, their tv programs are as boring as hell.

Sure, we have made huge advances in computer technology, but virtually nothing in practical hardware. SST’s? All gone. Fastest airliner in the sky now? The 1960′s Boeing 727. The new Orion manned space vehicle is basically a scaled up 1960′s Apollo. Ugh. We are wasting our inheritance on online role playing games and I-pod applications.

Heinlein would not be happy.

Bush Sr. didn’t go back because he was too busy breaking campaign promises. Clinton didn’t go back because he had someone better to do and W didn’t go back because he spent all his time shootin’ terrorists, spending money on government projects, and kissing Ted Kennedy’s backside.

Obama is a sissy. He won’t go back because he figures space is racist because of it’s color.

I think someone here had it right. Go to Obama and the UN, and tell them that if they stop taking our money and telling us what to do, then we’ll use the money to leave the planet. We’ll go colonize the Solar System, mine and drill asteroids, and generally have a blast.

They can finally implement their anti-technology, Luddite ideaology, and go back to pooping in the woods and living in caves.

In 200 years, we’ll come back, install brain control chips in their heads, and enslave the entire population and force them to cut our asteroid lawns and bring us Gin & Tonics.

I’m ready for departure sooner than later.

1 The government is a bloated, gassy, self congratulating sloth.

2 Congress, in it’s infinite wisdom, decided that the NASA programs were too boring and not popular enough with the people any more. So they decided to spend the money on Teddy Kennedy’s yacht collection instead.

3 But since they didn’t want to be seen as completely backwards nincompoops, they decided to fund a new program- the Shuttle program. The shuttle can’t even leave the Earth’s orbit. They had to build a space station to give it some place to go to.

4 THEN! They stripped the remaining Saturn V rockets down and stuck them in museums. All except one. Which sits by itself at the Johnson Space Center playing Sims3 and picking the lint from it’s toes.

5 Fortunately we have the Shuttle program! Which turned out to be WAY more expensive than they thought (derruh), it doesn’t do what they said it would do, and turns out to be a freaking dangerous way to fly in and out of the atmosphere.

* Privatize space
* Nuke the Moon
* Punch the hippies

[Then help them leave the planet. -Ed.]