p. The thing that strikes me the most about these numbers is the fact that even space activists who should know better seem to have been seduced by NASA's “Exploration” rhetoric. I know I sound like a broken record on this, but “exploration” is not a reason. Its an action that you take in response to a reason. Lewis and Clark explored the west looking for the northwest passage which would enable a more direct trade with the Orient and thus break open the wealth of North America. Columbus was trying to become rich by trading directly with China. Sure, those men probably had a personal bent towards concepts of “glory and honor” but those that funded the exploration were always motivated by wealth or power. Only when the cost of the exploration was so low that anyone could do it for purely personal reasons (i.e. building a boat and simply floating down the river) did 'exploration' truly become a reason in its own right. And even then, if you dug deep enough there were deeper motivations: curiosity, the need to get away from the mediocrity of the masses, gold, a better life for your children, attempts at utopian communities, etc.

p. But I was glad to see that the 2nd runner up was “Settlement”. And once you combine the votes for “Settlement” and “Emigration” (46 votes) you get a sense that, yes, most do indeed “get it”. So at this point I'm not going to continue my usual rant about a national dialog on what our purpose is in space since I've made a personal discovery over the past few years: a large majority of the human population just doesn't think about things at meta-levels. Most find the statement “get the question right first” as simply annoying and immaterial. So I'm going to simply gloss over it by making a statement that the average human can understand (he may not agree, but he can at least understand the statement):

bq. ** Forget exploration, science and spinoffs. The fundamental reason that the US should be involved in space is that Americans want to go there. Now. They want to go there to build wealth, to live, and to form empires that dwarf anything humans have ever conceived of. **

p. It is the same reason people built an airline industry. No one flies in a 747 to explore the air. They simply want to get from Point A to Point B very quickly. Space isn't about exploration or any other feel good, politically correct, Mr. Rogers notion of a “noble cause to understand our universe.” Its about that sweaty, churning mass of love, hate, fear, greed, opportunity and universe changing potential that makes humanity what it is.

p. And we want that now. Not 200 years from now. We don't want to keep pushing our Star Trek vision into some future that's always in the future. That is something we can get behind. That is something that we will pay for. Hell, as much as it rankles the libertarian in me, its even something I might be willing to pay taxes for!

p. But I am NOT willing to support this patently un-American notion of Soviet-style government bureaucracy dedicated to kingdom building and preservation of ivory tower science.

p. One of my favorite comments in all of the threads I mentioned at the top of this article is this one by “enloop” (found in Frustrating): bq. __ Asking today “Do Humans belong in space?” is a bit like asking “Do humans belong in Iowa?” Or, a bit like someone 70,000 years ago sitting in Eastern Africa asking “Do humans belong in that other valley over there?”

    Humans "belong" anyplace they choose.



    The question is really just a euphemism for "Shouldn't we just give up and be small?"__

p. I'll be damned if I'm going to just “give up and be small” because everyone elseseems to have been seduced into thinking that spending billions to send a few government bureaucrat into orbit somehow qualifies as the “noble pursuit of space exploration”.

p. That is what I think our reason for being in space should be…