Yesterday (Oct.4), Tim Kyger, life-long friend and expert on space policy, wrote:
“49 years ago today, the very first thing of any sort was put into Earth orbit by we puny humans. The beginning of a new age; a breakpoint in history.”
Next year will be the half-century mark since the beginning of space exploration. While it began with a Soviet project, and there have been important contributions to it in several countries, the United States put the most effort into exploring space. Some people, myself included, consider the exploration of space to be a critically important human activity, one which is congruent with the responsible stewardship of the earth’s ecology, respect for human rights, and the fostering and creation of the arts. To us, it is saddening to contemplate how little has been accomplished in that half century, compared to what could have been accomplished.
There has been some useful exploration of the solar system by robot probes, and there has been the accumulation of experience in close-to-earth human space activity. A series of human trips to the Moon ended long ago, and have not been repeated. Those of us who grew up dreaming of space had expected that, by now, we would have a permanent lunar base. Americans could have explored the entire solar system with a tiny fraction of the money they threw away on self-destructive war and state-subidized corporate feudalism. The fact that they have not done so, bespeaks a moral failure that runs very, very deep.
At the end of WWII, the United States emerged as the richest, most technologically advanced society on earth, as well as one that produced a high standard of living for the ordinary citizen. Space exploration was a natural outgrowth of its exuberant vitality. The cost, in relation to its gigantic and productive economy, was trivial. The technological and spiritual payoff was well worth the effort. Americans were crowning their prosperity with something that would benefit the human race as a whole.
Now, the United States is in debt up to its ears. It still retains a certain amount of economic creativity (inventions and new products and services still flow from its enterprises), and it still possesses an impressive inherited infrastructure. But the level of debt is so gigantic that no amount of economic activity can ever pay it off. The creditors are, chiefly, the Chinese Communist Party and various disgusting dictators and oil-rich kings and princes —- the scum of the earth. It is American Conservatives who are primarily responsible for transferring most of America’s wealth to kings and Communist thugs. And it is American Conservatives who are primarily responsible for the self-destructive wars, subsidized state economy, and colossal economic corruption that have turned their country from an economic wonder to an indebted invalid.
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