It’s tough to find critics of NASA’s robotic planetary exploration program, particularly now given the spectacular successes of the Mars rovers, Cassini, and other missions. But then there’s curmudgeonly commentator Les Kinsolving, a talk radio host and columnist for the right-of-center online publication WorldNetDaily. In a column today he lambasts NASA for the New Horizons mission to Pluto, slated for launch in two weeks. “Whoever is responsible should be fired and this outrageous waste canceled.” Well, it’s a little late now, Mr. Kinsolving. He appears to be outraged at just the general concept of sending a spacecraft to fly past Pluto, at one point referring to “NASA extremist exploration” (!) and elsewhere noting that sending a New Horizons-class mission (at $650 million a piece) to each of the estimated half-million Kuiper Belt Objects would cost a cool $325 trillion (a case, one might argue, of extremist extrapolation.)
Don’t get too hot under the collar about this essay: while he may not be intentionally humorous, this, like his occasional appearances at White House press conferences, is worth a chuckle or two.
A fine example of the short-sighted, small-time thinking that prevails among so many of our people these days.
Ironic that he argues the mission is not scientifically viable (because the probe will arrive in 2015 just when Pluto is entering its winter.)
The Pluto-Kuiper Express would have arrived there years earlier, but it was cancelled for budgetary reasons.
Typical of the “depth” many conservative right-wing thinkers display,where matters of space development,settlement and exploration are concerned. This is an example of why I quit the Republican party in 2001, and hold to an independent/Dynamist/right-libertarian practical anarchist political point of view. When a right-wing commentator finally gives space anything the proper attention it deserves, I will be there to witness it, or at least hear it.Maybe Jerry Doyle, or Michael Savage…………….
When a right-wing commentator finally gives space anything the proper attention it deserves
Funny, we usually hear on this blogs that the liberals are the evil anti-space devils.
What’s happening here, I think, is a fundamental disconnect in the way you and some of these others decide the validity of policy. If you were to judge outer solar system exploration on a cost/benefit basis, it would be difficult to justify. What is the payoff from learning about the weather on Pluto, anyway, and why does it justify the cost? (I can think of some benefits, but they’re awfully long term.) Clearly there must be some level of cost that wouldn’t be justifiable (I think the $325 T wisecrack is meant to emphasize that), so where does one draw the line?
Still, we have these missions anyway, in part because cost/benefit often isn’t the criterion that is used to make policy decisions. What creates policy is often irrational and emotional, based on who tells the best story. It’s policy driven by myth rather than rational thought. IMO, what we get from this is often policy that feels good but doesn’t actually make sense in the short or the long term.
hold to an independent/Dynamist/right-libertarian practical anarchist political point of view
Im,a with you Perry, damn the hyphens and keep a close eye on the commas! Fullspeed ahead!
… hold to an independent/Dynamist/right-libertarian practical anarchist political point of view…
Funny, supporting a program in which the Government takes money from an individual (or many individuals, e.g. taxpayers, in this place) under the threat of force (IRS) to give to a bunch of priviledged few (NASA cronies) to spend on a deep space probe with very limited value to the general public doesn’t seem to be a libertarian point of view. What is so important about this mission (or many other similar space robotic missions) that justifies taking money away from people who work hard, earn an income, and who could use that money (taxes) to enhance the quality of life for their family?
GuessWho: apparently in new age libertarianism, it’s ok to make other people pay for something if you really really want it.
I’ll take Libertarians seriously the day they really live their philosophy and stop driving their cars on collectively paid for roads and freeways; stop flying collectively developed aircraft technology from collectively paid for airports; stop using the collectively developed Internet Protocal on collectively deployed telephone lines; stop watching Satellite Television over collectively developed satellite technology deployed via collectively developed launch vehicles; and . . . well, I’m sure you get the picture.
— Donald
…well, I’m sure you get the picture.
Sorry for the topic drift, Jeff, but yes, we get the picture, Donald. We get the picture that you’re not interested in engaging in serious political discussion.
Do you really think that someone who thinks that privatizing roads would be a good idea should never travel on roads that she’s been forced to pay for with her tax dollars as a protest in support of it?
Unlike you, apparently, most libertarians are realists.
Actually, Rand, I fully support the privatization of roads, and have done so here in the past. In fact, I believe subsidized automobile use has done serious damage to us. However, large scale deployment of private roads will never happen, not least because it would make driving so expensive that the middle class would never stand for it.
I believe I was engaging in serious political discussion. This mythology that our technological culture is supported solely (or even mostly) by “private enterprise” — or that it could be — is dead wrong, and pretending that it is correct does serious damage to producing technically, politically, and economicly realistic routes to a spacefaring civilization.
— Donald
This mythology that our technological culture is supported solely (or even mostly) by “private enterprise” — or that it could be — is dead wrong, and pretending that it is correct does serious damage to producing technically, politically, and economicly realistic routes to a spacefaring civilization.
To whatever degree that’s true (I’m not going to debate it here, and it seems another strawman to me), it has nothing to do with the pseudo arguments you made against libertarian positions.
Good, good. Commentqry is wgat I wanted from my combination political commentary/spacer rant, and boy, did I get it in spades. At least some people are open to changing their rusted in place political ideologies, and to discussing what actually might work to get us into space to stay, en masse.
Suggestion: read the excellent commentaries/editorials by John Carter McKnight, termed by him “The Spacefaring Web” if you want to follow my reasoning and desire for a new economic-political dynamic more individual rights and space settlement friendly than the current more of the same drivel the Democrats, Republicans, and conventional Libertarians expouse. Then, think it out.
Finally, politics and economics are tools and a means, not an end, for anyone seeking to create a true spacefaring race out in the solar system. For others, political and economic power serve what I term geocentric static culture, rather than serve as midwife to any or all spacefaring cultures. And current geocentric-static political parties and scalar money oriented economies are ill suited to the task of establishing a spacefaring civilization, hence the need for a new political-economic matrix.