Well, I’m glad to see that our modest city still beats out the hyperthyroid suburb to the south on some important things. Come on up and see it. I may be able to offer you crash space. If you E-mail me privately, I’ll ask my partner if it’s okay with her. . . .

— Donald

Thirty years … ten years … a hundred years.

We can’t even get a human being to and from LEO. Further-more (not distance), if the rocket fails, the crew escape crash dummy standard NASA set in Nov. 1963 is now available only in Ivanland and the land of the growing red Sinosaurus.

Imagine if the DuPont Co, who at one time set the Chemical industry safety standard, were to abandon its own standard and accept a lower standard even as other chemical companies strived to meet or exceed the standard.

That is what NASA did. NASA lowered its standards, in exuberance not learning Apollo 13 lessons and thinking failure not an option. The escape design, not the management system, saved Apollo 13. Lesson unlearned.

It is not so much a matter of the destination. It is more the dignity of humanity at stake. After all, what is a colony on Mars when Earth has yet to be effectively colonized. And as the Rocket Man prophesized, “Mar ain’t no kind of place to raise your kids.”

–Fred