Neoconservatives on Mars-Killing all sorts of birds with one rocket ship.

Jerusalem Post ^ | 1-15-04 | LARRY DERFNER

[Cincinatus]

There's no security to be found in space, no useful science, no industry – only, for some people, a thrill, a mind-stretch, and a dazzling show. .....

The writer is a veteran journalist

And a nitwit.

[SkyRat]

fortune -m space

"Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
-- Johnny Hart

[BlueLancer]

"The only practical benefit anyone's gotten out of 40 years of space exploration is Teflon."

Wow, the author conveniently forgets the greatest invention to come from the Space Program ...

[Hillary's Folly]

Neoconservatives – meaning conservatives who use words like "breathtaking," "astonished," "amused," "felicitous" and "delighted" – are understood to be Americans with a passion for pure capitalist economics, constant war, and the Likud.

While I agree with Cincinatus that this guy is a nitwit. This line is funny, with a certain amount of truth.

[Batrachian]

Normally, I don't harp on the all the money Israel gets from the U.S., but when they start to tell us how to spend our money and tell us that welfare is more important than the space program, then I have to say MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. Of course, this is a journalist, not the Israeli government's position, but I have to wonder why he should care if we have a space program. Let him attack Israel's space program. He probably thinks we don't need a military, either, and if we just provide clean water and medicine and doctors and nurses to terrorists they'll be nice. They're probably decent people, just misunderstood, is the liberals' mind set. Same with the space program. All they can see is Teflon (he forgets to mention Tang).

"Neoconservatives...

...are understood to be Americans with a passion for pure capitalist economics, constant war, and the Likud. Whoever doesn't get excited over those three causes cannot be called a neoconservative. But there is one more identifying mark, one that I think captures the neocon spirit like nothing else: the space program."

Well, that tears it. I'm a neoconservative. I've been wondering. At least this fool did one good thing - he helped me figure out what I am.

[L,TOWM]

Well, at least we have a reply to the "waste of money" crowd. Seriously, your Tang reference was funny, but when I got the first blurb of "better spent on problems here", I asked the critic if she used a cell phone or personal computer. When she said "of course", I told her that she had NASA to thank for funding the research that produced the integrated circuit (micro chip). She was stunned that the Apollo program actually produced something of value.

And yes, I did mention Teflon and Tang, too. :-)

[Gefreiter]

Typical socialist: America has it (wealth, knowledge, resources, food; whatever "it" is), so should give it away to the whole world.

There is a place for charity in the world, but charity is very different from doing things for a world that can't be bothered to do for itself.

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

you don't tell starving children you can't feed them because you'd rather throw your money away on some joyride.

If we embraced this kind of logic, we'd all still be huddling in caves in Europe.

[general_re]

By now all those arguments have gone out the window. The only practical benefit anyone's gotten out of 40 years of space exploration is Teflon. And anyone who's ever tried to save calories by eating an egg fried on Teflon, without margarine, would challenge even that.

There's no security to be found in space, no useful science, no industry – only, for some people, a thrill, a mind-stretch, and a dazzling show.

Amazing how this idiocy seems to be spreading - try this.

[SwampFoxOfVa]

Maybe we should stop giving money to Israel and give it instead to the space program.
Wonder how the author would like that.

[goldstategop]

Liberals today have closed minds. The thrill of exploration holds no interest for them. Too bad Captain Kirk can't phaser the idiots for whom the final frontier is universalis incognita.

[boris]

The only valid reason for emplacing colonies on the Moon/Mars is to protect the human race from extinction by a catastrophic event, such as a big asteroid strike.

You don'--as a species--want all your genetic eggs in one basket.

But try using that as the rationale!

--Boris

[boris]

Sorry, don't.

[Shryke]

The only practical benefit anyone's gotten out of 40 years of space exploration is Teflon.

ROTFL!!! Dumbest thing I've read in a long, long time.

The writer is a veteran journalist

LMAO!! How about : The writer is a veteran journalist shmucktard?

[COEXERJ145]

"The only practical benefit anyone's gotten out of 40 years of space exploration is Teflon."

Actually Teflon was invented by accident by a chemist working for the DuPont Company in the late 1930’s. Its first major use was in the Manhattan Project. Uranium hexafluoride is highly corrosive but using a Teflon (not called that until after WWII) coating on the equipment exposed to U-Hexafluoride protected it from the corrosive effects.

The greatest thing to come out of the space program (and the ICBM programs as well) is micro miniaturization.

[hchutch]

Don't forget the biomedical sensors...

"I'm sick and tired of the Western world learning how my kidneys funtion..."

[arjay]

Excellent link. Many people owe their lives to the medical uses of technology discovered in the space program.

I am not really excited about a new space program, but one never knows what can be the results. A lot of Europeans had the same reservations about exploring the New World etc. Man has an inborn thirst for knowledge and it seems to bring out both the best and worst in us.

I am not sure this is the best way to spend our resources at present, but if we do it, I hope we do it right.

[general_re]

I am not really excited about a new space program, but one never knows what can be the results.

That is, IMO, exactly correct. R&D always pays off - always - but the trouble is that you never know in advance exactly what you're going to get out of it, and therefore, you never know what you're giving up by not doing it. Some of the spinoffs of space exploration are so obvious that we take them for granted, but they're spinoffs nonetheless - think of the millions of lives that have been saved over the last few decades by something as simple as improved weather forecasting via satellites. That's a simple and direct spinoff, but who could have predicted in advance that space exploration would lead to things like angiograms?

The important point is that solving problems in one area can accidentally lead to solutions of completely different problems in completely different areas, but if you don't attack the initial problems, you'll never know what you gave up by so doing. If you're not familiar with it, James Burke's excellent "Connections" series (books and television) look at technological development from exactly that perspective. That is, where the development of things we take for granted - airplanes, telephones, computers, nuclear weapons, et cetera - are really the result of a long historical chain, sometimes hundreds or thousands of years long, full of people solving their own immediate problems, which really had nothing at all to do with the things that eventually came about as a result. Solving some technological problem today sets a foundation for solving some other technological problem tomorrow, no matter what today's problem happens to be.

[COEXERJ145]

Don't forget the biomedical sensors...

"I am sick and tired of the entire Western World knowing how my kidneys are functioning!"

LOL! One of the few Tom Hanks movies I can stomach.

I like the last line @ the end of the movie when the Apollo 13 crew are shaking hands with men on the ship including the real Jim Lovell.

"I sometimes catch myself looking up at the moon, remembering the changes of fortune in our long voyage, thinking of the thousands of people who worked to bring the three of us home. I look up at the moon, and wonder: When will we be going back? And who will that be?"