The Banal Frontier Continued

Idle Words offers a great essay on the crippled NASA Space Shuttle program. It's full of great stuff that, if you're a somewhat rational person who can put aside the emotion of science fiction for just ten secods, will make you angry. My favorite portion is the rebuttal to the argument that critics of manned space flight are as close-minded as some Old World Europeans.

[NASA likens] critics of manned space flight to those Europeans in the 1500's who would have cancelled the great voyages of discovery rather than face the loss of one more ship.

Of course, the great explorers of the 1500's did not sail endlessly back and forth a hundred miles off the coast of Portugal, nor did they construct a massive artificial island they could repair to if their boat sprang a leak. And we must remember that space is called space for a reason - there is nothing in it

That's right, NASA. You throw glib analogies at we plebes, and we'll throw it right back at you.

And shame on you, NASA, for the continuing elementary school propaganda, though it won't matter. Children are far more cynical today than even during my pre-Challenger years. The ambitions of space exploration are no longer guided by pulp sci-fi or multiple derivatives of Gene Roddenberry's bland secular vision, nor are they guided by the Cold War mantra of "Beat Those Pinko Commies."