Carnival rides in space

It has been obvious for some time that the U.S. manned space program has degenerated into a hollow public relations campaign with no purpose other than its own useless survival. But last Thursday, "Commander" Eileen Collins made the case eloquently.

Orbiting 220 miles above the Earth, Collins complained that she could see environmental damage with the naked eye.

"Sometimes you can see how there is erosion," she said.

And this: "We would like to see, from the astronauts' point of view, people take good care of the Earth and replace the resources that have been used."

And this: "The atmosphere almost looks like an eggshell on an egg, it's so very thin. We know that we don't have much air, we need to protect what we have."

We don't have much air? This is science?

No, this is the kind of idiocy that killed the Columbia astronauts. NASA refused to buck the environmental lobby after the EPA ordered it to stop using Freon in the foam application process, even though it was plain from the first mission that the new Freon-free foam was shearing off during lift-off and threatening to cause catastrophic damage to the fragile thermal tiles.

So, astronauts would like to see people take good care of the Earth. That's nice. Maybe we should all die so the rocks can live in peace.

Environmentalism, taken to its logical conclusion, is a death cult. It never has been taken to its logical conclusion -- the human desire to survive makes hypocrites out of the most fervent believers -- but if it ever were followed all the way out, it would force human beings to make the preservation of their own lives secondary to the need to keep the Earth in its untouched, natural state.

All the rest of the galaxy is in an untouched natural state. There's one planet in the known universe that can support human life, human intelligence, human happiness, and environmentalists are using their short time on it to whine about preserving dirt.

Well, they can go evaporate if they think that's their highest moral purpose. Some of us who pay the taxes for these pointless, indulgent carnival rides in space don't see it that way.


Copyright 2005