To Boldly Go? Or Wait on the Gimme?

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."

"Roger, Twan... [correcting himself] Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot."

Our finest hour. The first time we set foot on the Moon. Now we're retiring our Space Shuttle fleet (that is only just getting broken in) and barely working on replacements.

In other news, a science panel has told NASA it should focus on sending a solar powered rover to Mars instead of trying to focus on manned space flights. The Obama administration even cut funding to the renewed lunar program this past year.

What happened? Once American used to have the Right Stuff. Our curiosity led us deeper and deeper into the heavens--but no more. Now we're more worried about social programs helping those who don't want to work (or feel entitled to not work) and would rather depend upon the Federal Gimme feeding, sheltering, and clothing them.

What about all those great side benefits that come out of space exploration? Velcro as an example.

"Oh, that could have been thought up by a commercial company at a fraction of the wasted cost that NASA used."

Possibly. But at what cost? Keeping us down in our well?

"All the Lunar landing gave us was some pretty pictures of our planet and some rocks. Big deal."

It is a big deal. We once tread the surface of our satellite. We can do it again. Perhaps not with NASA, but with private enterprise--oh, I know, I know. You want us to cut their tax breaks so they pay their fair share of the Gimme cash for the non-workers in this nation. Perhaps even to help pay the union wages for those that are members of a union that feel entitled to garner a larger paycheck than the rest of us.

"But you're not seeing the point. NASA developed a 'space pen' that works in zero gravity. If you ask me, we did it before with something called a pencil. Hello?"

Yeah, hello. It's called "Free Fall," not zero gravity. It may not be that big a deal, and you are right. We had the same thing with a pencil. But government forms have to be filled out wherever the government goes. The government went to space, so it needed a pen for all that paperwork. Yes, private enterprise would have not needed that and would have come up with something similar for a fraction of the cost--

"And it still would have been a waste. Think of the hungry and the poor in this world! What about them?"

Sure. What about them? We're fishing our oceans into ruin, and farming our lands until every last bit of nutritional value is removed from the soil. What then? Not only will we still have the hungry, but the rest of us will hunger, too. Poor? We'll all be poor. Don't you think that space exploration can work on a solution to that? The minerals we need to survive on can be mined out there (for profit!), and the time it takes to get there will force us to create a system of nutrition that will feed the astronauts on the way there and back. Don't you believe that the same system could be used to feed us here on Earth?

I actually got in a discussion with someone that felt so strongly about our wasted dollars going into space instead of feeding people around the world. She was arguing with me via her mobile smart phone. I asked her how much she spent on that gadget monthly. She gave me an exorbitant number. i asked her if she was so worried about the hungry, why not cut out all the Whizz Bang from her phone service and just use it as an emergency phone? She could feed a small nation with her monthly bill. Of course, she then proceeded to turn it around on me and snap about how much I spend on internet each month. Not to worry, said I. I'm not trying to feed the world. I'll let the Gimme do that. I'm headed to one of those 1200 planets that the Kepler telescope has discovered. Oh, don't worry. I won't ask the Gimme to help and take money away from your social programs. We'll use private enterprise and do it ourselves.

But wait, there’s more!

OK, so we can kill the six billion dollar budget for NASA as useless, but Obama approves a SEVEN billion dollar budget for nuclear weapons research? What’s up with this? Is he about to name himself “President For Life”? Or perhaps he’s just going to start calling himself “World Emperor.”

Didn’t he intend to improve the world’s perception of the United States? He wanted to dissipate anti-Americanism around the world, showing them that we were not a, “nutty, dictating superpower.”

What happened to the Saccharin man in the Whitehouse, bowing down to foreign dignitaries? Is it all over? Was all that hobnobbing just for show? Will we now start nuking the opposition?

Or is he reserving those new nukes for use on his adversaries here in America?

Perhaps he is just suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder.

Or should we be on the lookout for Obama’s False Prophet?

NASA Bites the Dust; Thank You, Obama!

Before we get back to the froggies, let me go off on a minor rant here.

See, that bonehead in the Whitehouse (who has now lost any scrap of respect he might have garnered from my corner of the world,) decided to cank NASA’s budget.

Huh. So space travel is not important in the grand plan of handing out money to banks and welfare recipients, who, here in my state, went in to Wally World today to buy groceries with her food stamps card, and then went out to the parking lot and put her groceries in the back of a $60,000 Lexus—but I digress.

Let’s see . . . NASA was to get $6,000,000,000. Now compared to the grand total of what the socialist in the Whitehouse intends to spend—a whopping $3,830,000,000,000, that puts NASA’s budget at .0015 percent. That’s way less than one penny on the dollar. I must not be very good at math. I don’t see how this can be too much money to spend on space exploration.

But let’s get away from the monetary value for the moment. Let’s look at future benefits for mankind that will be missed out on. I mean, c’mon—where would we be without Velcro? Oh, don’t get snarky on me. There was mush more than Velcro to come out of the space program. Your home computer is one aspect. What else?

Laser surveying tools
Compact Digital Discs (CDs and DVDs)
Scratch resistant lenses
Dustbusters
Home security systems
Smoke detectors
Flat panel TVs/monitors
High density batteries
Trash compactors
Freeze dried food technology
Sports bras
Quartz crystal time pieces
Solar energy panels
Noise abatement technology
Energy saving air conditioning technology
Air purification technology
Laser angioplasty
Ultrasound scanners
Automatic insulin pumps
Portable X-ray devices
MRIs
Self locking nuts
Wireless communications (your cellphone)
Emergency rescue cutters (Jaws of life-type equipment)
Doppler radar
Firefighter’s radios
Fire protective clothing
Robotic arms

The list goes on and on. But it seems that we can’t afford those measly pennies on the dollar because it would take away from his pet projects—like a high speed rail system for California. Hmm, people quit using the train already because it was too expensive. So we’re going to make it run faster (in another 20 years or so—that’s how long it will take to create this “green” monstrosity!) and then we’ll have to subsidize it like we’re already doing with freight rails. So, there you go! No space for money to be spent on the space program! I’m starting to see it from a green point of view. But what do I know?

I can hear the Green Police knocking on my door for wrong thinking now. Go ‘way! No one here but us Droogs.