Canadian Clown in Space

http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/c...entid=22025989

Isn't this the reason people can no longer take "Human Spaceflight"
seriously
any more?

Can the naysayers be gifted any better argument against spending
resources on Human
Spaceflight than having this street juggler cavorting about a
$30+Billion space outpost trying
to legitimize his being there by spewing propaganda from the likes of
Gore/U2 and pretending he
is on some kind of global awareness-expanding educational crusade
about drinking water quality?

What hope is there for the human race if one of the more pressing life
or death issues demanding
attention has to be made part of an obscene side show in space to gain
a place on the global
"to do" Agenda ? The whole thing trivializes the water quality problem
just as surely as it does
human spaceflight.

And, It doesn't say much for the average intelligence of the "First
World " dwellers that cannot be
bothered to come up for air long enough to give a few nano-seconds'
worth of consideration to a
global concern unless they are somehow "entertained" while being so
educated.

If this guy could just present himself honestly as the thrill seeking
mega-millionaire he really is,
it would't raise the queasiness levels in quite so many stomachs and
he might actually turn out
to be more genuinely endearing to many more people.

I grew up with Grissom, Lovell, Gagarin, Armstrong and those others
like them that were part of
something real, purposeful and important. Yet today, here is what our
kids have to inspire them:
....A sham of a space program, unsupportable by any politician worried
about his own re-election,
let alone any nation, including one as great as the United States of
America, now having spread
itself so thinly with many pressing domestic and global obligations
crying for atention.

This Floating Buffoon will be appropriated by the naysayers as the
perfect image of what a
rudderless pursuit human spaceflight has become and why it will
continue to be increasingly
irrelevant.

And, I think America now has just the right Demagogue in the White
House fanning the
Crisis-all-around-us, America-on-the-Decline Gloominess to deal the
final blow to Human
Spaceflight.

With a bloated and unimaginative NASA tie-wrapped at the wrists of the
"Grand Circus Masters
of Space" themselves, the Russians, and a hostile administration
fiscally garrotting taxpayers
to pay for grandiose social engineering projects, who here really
believes we are ever going back to
the Moon, let alone Mars, with Manned vehicles within our lifetimes?

I hope I am wrong.

Carmine

On Oct 2, 8:35*am, CarmineRed wrote:
http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/c...documentid=220....

Isn't this the reason people can no longer take "Human Spaceflight"
seriously
any more?

Can the naysayers be gifted any better argument against spending
resources on Human
Spaceflight than having this street juggler cavorting about a
$30+Billion space outpost trying
to legitimize his being there by spewing propaganda from the likes of
Gore/U2 and pretending he
is on some kind of global awareness-expanding educational crusade
about drinking water quality?

What hope is there for the human race if one of the more pressing life
or death issues demanding
attention has to be made part of an obscene side show in space to gain
a place on the global
"to do" Agenda ? The whole thing trivializes the water quality problem
just as surely as it does
human spaceflight.

And, It doesn't say much for the average intelligence of the "First
World " dwellers that cannot be
bothered to come up for air long enough to give a few nano-seconds'
worth of consideration to a
global concern unless they are somehow "entertained" while being so
educated.

If this guy could just present himself honestly as the thrill seeking
mega-millionaire he really is,
it would't raise the queasiness levels in quite so many stomachs and
he might actually turn out
to be more genuinely endearing to many more people.

I grew up with Grissom, Lovell, Gagarin, Armstrong and those others
like them that were part of
something real, purposeful and important. Yet today, here is what our
kids have to inspire them:
...A sham of a space program, unsupportable by any politician worried
about *his own re-election,
let alone any nation, including one as great as the United States of
America, now having spread
itself so thinly with many pressing domestic and global obligations
crying for atention.

This Floating Buffoon will be appropriated by the naysayers as the
perfect image of what a
rudderless pursuit human spaceflight has become and why it will
continue to be increasingly
irrelevant.

And, I think America now has just the right Demagogue in the White
House fanning the
Crisis-all-around-us, America-on-the-Decline Gloominess to deal the
final blow to Human
Spaceflight.

With a bloated and unimaginative NASA tie-wrapped at the wrists of the
"Grand Circus Masters
of Space" themselves, the Russians, and a hostile administration
fiscally garrotting taxpayers
to pay for grandiose social engineering projects, who here really
believes we are ever going back to
the Moon, let alone Mars, with Manned vehicles within our lifetimes?

I hope I am wrong.

Carmine

ISS has been kind of a joke anyway.

What's really funny is that Russia has been turning a not so small
profit, and our NASA is in the nearest space toilet that doesn't
always work. Perhaps our NASA needs a good clown car instead of that
spendy and sometimes lethal shuttle, not to mention the global
pollution it causes each time.

~ BG

Quite the contrary. I'm ecstatic that someone can BUY their way into space.
It gets ME that much closer to space.



"CarmineRed" wrote in message
...
Well, I get out lots, thanks...and not just to space museums.
But seeing as this is a place to discuss and exchange
ideas about spaceflight history, it would seem to me anyone truly
wanting to see
real manned space exploration, as once practiced 40 and more years
ago, can only
be dismayed and disheartened at what it's come to today.

And sure, money talks...builds many dacha's for corrupt Russian space
fat cats
and keeps their Gemini era washtubs flying. I am bemoaning the lack of
progress
and interest in manned space and how turning to these kinds of circus
stunts
erodes the credibility of those who argue for real goals and further
bold steps in space.

The end result is manned space turning into a frivolity most of
humanity will
gladly dispense with. Your trips to the museums will quickly begin to
get very stale.



--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.