News coming out that NASA may scratch or put on hold any plans to return to the moon because of budget constraints? The day China, with Russian help, put a man on the moon while America sits back doing nothing because of a lack of money will mark the end of the American empire, maybe not quite as a matter of fact, but definitely as an expression of a psychological, a cultural reality.
Obama allowed that idiot Pelosi to conjure up an 800 billion dollar stimulus that is mostly nonsensical goo and foist it on an ignorant public and yet we can't come up with 60 billion needed to head back to the moon? That really pisses me off - the ascension of weak kneed liberalism that thinks it wrong to spend so much money on such a venture when so many people are in need. Can just picture some little pissant sitting before his laptop waxing all sentimental about how the world is going to be a more humane and enlightened place now that the Obama is here - maybe he can take a minute between tears to google Apollo Guidance Computer - yeah, try that on for size ya greasy little miscreant. Bastards.
Anyway... some good might come of this - talk of solving budget problems by contracting out NASA specific tasks to private companies - that might actually prove to be an interesting development. But if the day came where American private enterprise was carrying much of the space exploration load watch the rest of the world attempt to enact laws to restrict such a thing.
I'll say one thing though, if these budget problems stem from keeping that space station viable, I would drop that thing into the ocean so gad damn quickly - blow it up! Whatever it had to teach us about living in space has no doubt been learned - it's nothing more now than an expensive symbol honouring a hollow ideal.
