Non illigitamus carborundum

07/15/05 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

I go through these swings where I'll get deeply involved in some flame war or discussion on someone elses board or forum and after a bit I just have to ask myself why. Take this thread on spacepolitics.com and numerous threads on Space Frontier Foundation's Space Arena board, for example. I could easily get sucked in to trying to prove to the Cecil Trotters of the world that they're wrong. And I used to do that. A lot. But as I've gotten older I've decided to be a little more discerning about who I waste my finite supply of key strokes on.

So when things like that come up and my fingers start to twitch toward the “post” link, I think twice. Is my discussion with this person doing anything to further my ambition to make a lot of money on helping people move into and exploit space? Sometimes it actually does. And its often because I'm really speaking to the other readers and not the person I'm actively having a discussion with.

So yea, I had a response to post on spacepolitics.com all ready to go and was about to hit the post button when I cancelled the entire thing. It just wasn't worth it. I just hope the Cecil Trotters of the world have the decency and the cajones to admit they were wrong when someone from Virgin Galactic welcomes NASA back to the moon by asking when they want their turn down service.