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.

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.

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.

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.

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.