Now this is a joke: Value of space program questioned -- The Washington Times

Yes, we've heard all these arguments before, Fred, you're not telling us anything new. Worse than rehashing the same old criticisms (some valid, some not), you're falling prey to the "all or nothing" fallacy implicit in the government monopoly on space travel:

Why do we want to go to Mars? The underlying answer seems to be that it would be a really neat thing to do, an adventure. Agreed. If a Martian expedition were sold honestly as sheer fun and an appeal to the exploratory spirit, and people still thought it worth doing, I'd say fine. Yet the cost would be fantastic.We don't have better uses for the money?

This is exactly the kind of thinking that keeps us from going anywhere in space -- space exploration is always thought to be a "guns or butter" sort of tradeoff, where money spent sending the Shuttle into space is not being spent on more "noble" causes like poverty elimination, education, infrastructure, or any number of other government programs which are so poorly managed as it is that NASA's entire budget could be transferred to their accounts without producing a visible improvement in results.

He entirely misses the point of private space enterprise -- that the real solution to the "going in circles" problems at NASA lies not in defunding its signature programs and focusing on very limited and "non-boring" robotic probes, but rather in a transition from the NASA monopoly to private competition. While I may pile on NASA myself, I suspect that terminating the agency outright would do more harm to private efforts than letting it continue in its current policies. Better the agency should lead by retreating -- gradually shifting its operations and programs over to private hands, eventually focusing primarily on the deep space scientific programs which Mr. Reed grudgingly accepts as legitimate, and the kind of basic research which characterized NACA, its predecessor.

Posted by T.L. James on February 26, 2002 09:12 PM