Last Wednesday, in an
op-ed for The Orange County Register, the Cato
Institute’s Gene Healy made the case that while amazing, our newest
“R/C” space crusade to Martian terra firma is ultimately
unaffordable:
“At 2.5 billion and counting […] it’s a hell of a neat
trick that NASA just pulled off, and it’s sure to generate a lot of
amazing video. And yet, Houston – and Washington – we have a
problem. By the end of the year, the Congressional Budget Office
warns, federal debt will approach 70 percent of GDP, near the
post-World War II high. In 25 years, CBO projects, health care and
retirement outlays will consume nearly as large a share of the
economy as the entire federal government does today.”
In other words, quips Healy, “This is why we can’t have neat
things.”
The space rover Curiosity is keeping busy collecting
soil sample to test for microbial life. According to NASA’s James
Green, evidence thereof would demand that humankind “rethink our
place in the universe.” Healy suggests that reckoning “our place in
the universe” isn’t an essential purpose of federal government. And
he’s absolutely correct.
Listen, I understand an inclination to achieve what’s awesome.
And having the ability to scope out the dusty, desolate panoramas of the
Red Planet from the comfort of your laptop is just that. According
to the LA Times, the linked panorama – which is almost impossibly
reminiscent of Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine – was
compiled by Andrew Bodrov, a user on the 360cities.net, a website
dedicated to panoramic photos.
But maybe we should expect even more? Back in 1998, Edward
Hughes – also of Cato – wrote
in the Baltimore Sun:
“Put the progress in spaceflight in historical perspective. The
Wright brothers’ first flight was in 1903, and Charles Lindbergh
flew across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. By the late 1930s, the
first commercially viable aircraft, the DC-3, was flying. But 35
years after Mr. Glenn’s first flight [Hughes writes at the time of
Glenn’s “bread and circus” foray into orbit as a 77 year old]
travel into space is still an expensive luxury.”
So while Gene’s correct, and NASA is expensive…it may also be
inefficient? Perhaps that’s not too much of a stretch for the same
government that brought you the U.S. Post Office and the
Pentagon.
The Christian Science Monitor
reports that “After traveling some 350 million miles and
executing a flawless supersonic-parachute-and-sky-crane-assisted
touchdown on the Red Planet, NASA’s Curiosity Mars
rover is just kicking back and relaxing for a few
days.”
So, yeah. That sounds about right.
Hughes wasn’t conflating (precisely) contemporary space travel
with those intrepid, aeronautical pioneers. But running with his
theme, I’ll humbly suggest that it’s not necessarily crazy to
expect something even more “mind-boggling” than a Martian landscape
via web browser…that was, itself, brought to you not by NASA, but
by user generated content.
