No No No No No

In response to the Mars Homestead Project, Chris Shults at Gristmill writes "I'm all for space exploration, but maybe we should get our act together on this planet before we go mucking up others."

This oft-repeated sentiment drives me absolutely insane. First of all, what does "mucking up" other planets consist of? Mars - to the best of our knowledge - is either dead, or nearly so. Do we wait until we get our act together before we upset some rocks? That's absurd. It's even worse if you believe (as I do) that a human presence in space and on Mars can contribute in a number of important ways to helping the rest of us on Earth "clean up our act." As just one example, solar power collected in orbit could be beamed back to Earth at much higher efficiency than ground-based solar power.

I find this attitude really unfortunate for another reason - space exploration and space science has only helped the environmental movement. It was pictures taken by the Apollo astronauts which first showed our planet to be the isolated oasis in space that it is. Similar pictures from space showed the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. It was measurements from the Space Shuttle which finally confirmed the damage that CFCs were doing to the ozone layer.

I recently had a somewhat tiresome argument over NASA's budget - specifically, the Deep Impact probe. It was a pretty common argument - basically, the money that NASA spends could be better spent "here on Earth." Progressives have been making this argument since Walter Mondale nearly killed the Apollo Program - months before it had a spectacular success with the Apollo 8 mission. There are three obvious problems with this line of reasoning: One: Where do you think the money is spent? NASA employs tens of thousands of people across the US. That money is allspent "here on Earth", creating a lot of well-paying jobs. Objection Two: If you were going to criticize America's spending priorities, why would you quibble over NASA's paltry budget, when the Pentagon gets larger budget increases some years than NASA's entire budget? Objection Three: NASA is probably the one activity the US government spends large sums on that doesn't contribute in some way to global human misery. All NASA does is put people in orbit, and put space probes on Mars (and in deep space, around Jupiter and Saturn, etc.) Compared to the FBI, NSA, CIA, and the Pentagon, NASA is practically the Mother Theresa of US government spending. And yet Progressives have always been extremely critical of NASA's "wasteful" spending. It's worth noting that, during the Apollo program, American households spent as much money on cosmetics as they did on space exploration.

My personal theory is that liberals and progressives have long since realized that fighting military spending is a game of diminishing returns - every time you make a cut, the public elects a Republican who jacks it right back up again. So rather than go after the elephant on the stage, liberals go after an easier target - NASA. It's sad, because NASA has done a lot to give evidence and ammunition to environmentalism. By attacking NASA (and space exploration in general), liberals are biting one of the hands that feeds them.