[newgeezer]

Please don't put words in my mouth. ... You disagree with use of those funds for exploration and that's fair enough.

That's funny! Because, just a moment ago, you cited repentant_pundit's post while declaring him and the rest of us who dare not buy into your ideas regarding the public funding of space exploration to be "neo-trogs [who] rot in the muck and lichens," who will (if left to themselves, I guess) "devolve back to the primordial slime, all the while fretting over petty and unimportant matters seemingly made large by the smallness of their minds." That, along with a good dose of other such vitriolic bile.

Now, you say he put words in your mouth, and our point of public funding is "fair enough"? Very funny, indeed. A regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

[chimera]

Wrong as usual. Post 57 asserted that I had a particular position that only two viewpoints were possible. I disputed that. No where did I oppose or preclude privately-funded ventures. At the same time, a national priority in exploration and development should also remain an option, although certainly a debatable one, as all publically-funded ventures should be. The neo-trog characterization was offered in opposition to the viewpoint that such publicly funded ventures should be excluded, because it narrows our options and limits our possibilities when we might otherwise be free to collectively apply our resources to a national policy or goal. You're free to object to such characterization on personal grounds, but doing so indicates casts the objection into more of a "protesting too much" form.