Obama’s modest proposal: no hue, no cry? (part 2)

With a half-century of political experience under my belt (yes, quite literally) coincident with the Space Age itself, I've reluctantly accepted the short-term thinking built into the original concept of a limited federal government in the United States later adapted to a preeminent role for central government, particularly in the 20th Century.

Early in the modern period of long neglect of lunar exploration, whose ending may finally be upon us, I became one of millions who at one time or another were loosely confederated as "Space Advocates," and similarly early on it became clear that, more often than not, we shared little else in common in our understanding of The Way Things Work.

Demographics are harsh things. Harsh enough to allow Senator Obama only a one in five chance of being elected president, for example, while delivering up a federal entitlement burden likely to squeeze NASA further and further into "the Out Years" in the decades ahead.

Greg Zsidisin in The Space Review continues this week, in "Obama's modest proposal," to confront an ancient sophistry I grew tired of hearing repeated endlessly in 1970, and the "Zero-Sum" model that needlessly pits a never-ending need for expansion of social programs against government-funding for space exploration.

That this ridiculous thinking merely survives, now into a sixth decade, adds to the argument that the future of government-funded lunar exploration and beyond belongs to moody Internationalism or to Entrepreneurship, with the former representing a mindset by nature intolerant and suspicious of the latter.

In again highly recommending Zsidisin's article, I have to again remind my fellow "entrepreneurs" that the age-old entanglement of academia and Collectivism likely makes under-funding of NASA less a threat to human space travel than Regulation.

Read Zsidisin's Article HERE.