There are a few, well, cranky people out there who don’t seem to care much for spending money on NASA. From today’s Durant (Okla.) Daily Democrat (“Gateway to Lake Texoma”), comes an essay by Harold Harmon, who seems to be having a bad day. Or week. Or longer:
We’ve also decided that 2003 UB313 is just barely larger than Pluto. Xena, as it has been named, could surpass Pluto as the 10th planet.
Could you have slept tonight without knowing that?
Like the trial [of Zacarias Moussaoui], these space-exploration things cost money. Like the trial, American citizens will receive little of value at the end of the road.
Ouch. Meanwhile, an anonymous person writing in the “You Said It” column of the Hagerstown (Md.) Herald-Mail isn’t too happy about the LCROSS lunar impact mission announced last week:
I see that gas just took another hop. Why do we have to depend on foreign oil anyhow? Is it because of the environmental people in the U.S.? I don’t see what they have done as far as clean air. People are still dying at a young age. And the government is going to let NASA put a thing up in space and burn a hole into the moon? What’s the matter with our government?
What is the matter, indeed.
“…comes an essay by Harold Harmon, who seems to be having a bad day. Or week. Or longer”
Interesting – attack the person because you don’t like his position.
The sad reality is that the space tragic community (as they are referred to here in australia) never seems willing to understand that the vast majority of the population doesn’t share your passion for space except in the most transitory manner. Wishing that they would, or blaming other groups (as some like to do with the environmentalists re: space), is simply denial.
The space community needs to move ahead into the anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance phases of development.
You make a good point, Mr. Ali.
I once interviewed John Pike. While I frequently disagree with him, I think he hit the nail on the head when he said,
From a more positive perspective, John Pike, [then] aerospace analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, agreed with Goodenaugh’s religious analogy. He said, “You have this very small minority of people who have had this personal ‘revelation’ that [human] spaceflight is important and means something. They have to trick the other ninety-five percent of taxpayers into paying for their own private, religious obsession.” Does Pike share this ‘religion’? He laughed, and said, “Yes! My first conscious memory was when I was four years old and went out into the back yard and saw Sputnik-1.”
The key point though is that this is not particularly unusual in human history. It was never the majority who saw value in exploring and exploiting a new frontier. However, if the minority had not done so, humanity would still be confined to a rift valley in Africa.
Just because we’re a minority, and largely ignored by the majority, does not mean what we’re doing does not have great value for the future of our species.
(I suppose this means I’ve advanced to the “bargaining” stage. . . .)
— Donald
“Interesting – attack the person because you don’t like his position.”
Did you actually read Harmon’s essay? Here’s a snippet:
“Okay, here’s how we make his [Zacarias Moussaoui] day. Forget about the multiple sticks with a small, dull hat pin. Somebody should walk up to Moussaoui in the court room, fire 17 shots into his stupid head and put the gun snugly into Moussaoui’s hand.”
After suggesting executing somebody in a courtroom, Harmon then started ranting about the space program. It’s unclear where that connection came from. I suspect that Space Politics linked to his essay rather tongue-in-cheek.
Interesting – attack the person because you don’t like his position.
That’s hardly an attack, Shubber. Mr. Harmon simply seemed a little grumpy in his essay. After all, check out his lede: “After further review, there is no good news. This is not technically correct, of course, but a quick look at newspapers and TV and the Internet might have us believing that good news is a thing of the past.” If he’s not having a bad day, I’m not sure I would want to read something he wrote when he was having a bad day.
“That’s hardly an attack, Shubber. Mr. Harmon simply seemed a little grumpy in his essay. ”
Jeff, if one reads the entire essay, i would agree with your comment that he was probably having a bad day (or more). But the way you chose to phrase it in the intro comments to the article don’t highlight the fact, but rather gave me the impression (perhaps wrongly) that for someone to disagree with the value/validity of the value of the space exploration is simply a function of their having a bad day, and not based on a valid position.