l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 by Reid Smith
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 collection 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. |
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