The Power and the Money

Not sad (the blog post)

 A while back, I mentioned on Facebook that I wasn’t sad to see the Shuttle end. Noel said he was sad that I wasn’t sad. That made me, in turn, a little sad. And the cure for sadness, as we all know, is to write a blog post.

Now: I was going to write a post about how (1) manned spaceflight was sort of a dubious idea to begin with, and (2) it wasn’t going away, since lots of other countries are doing it, and the US will get back into the business by and by, and (3) the Shuttle really did kinda suck; it was a bad design that was way too expensive and that killed many other, better projects. But that post — or, more likely, posts — would have been cranky. And who wants to read someone else being cranky on the internet?

So here’s a different post. Let’s start with a question: how has spending on space worldwide changed since, ohh, let’s say the end of the Apollo program — 1975? Gone up, gone down, about the same?

Answer below the fold:

Happy Moon Landing Day!

  That is all.  Oh, and Brian Kilmeade apologized. 

OK, that isn't all.  The truth is that while I can see absolutely no good reason for there to be a permanent human presence on the Moon, a small irrational part of me finds it both depressing and ridiculous that there isn't one four decades after humanity first set foot on its surface.  Where's my Pan Am ticket?  It's 2009 already, for crying out loud!

So I'd be happy if somebody could figure out a reason to settle the Moon.  Which I kinda doubt they will.  I mean, you'd have to live in a tube or a cave or something unpleasant like that.  And what would you sell to the people back on Earth to get the money to pay off the other people back on Earth who put up the cash to build that tube you're living in? 

But you never know.  Something might turn up.

That is all.