Reflections From a Murky Pond

Recently, astronaut Neil Armstrong’s widow uncovered and notified the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum about an old bag of relics from NASA’s historic Apollo 11 mission that she found tucked away in a closet and forgotten.

As is to be expected in these times of bloated and intrusive government, it didn’t take long for some people to interject politics into this event.

America’s Misplaced Moxie

As I stated, it is to be expected in these times of bloated and intrusive government that politics will get interjected into almost anything. That said, I find this to be a childish, naive, and ignorant interject in specific. America’s moxie, as applied and exemplified by NASA’s space program, was not misplaced, it was discarded as no longer needed or affordable.

As much I love NASA’s space program and miss what it was billed as during my childhood – Yeah, I loved sitting in front of the TV and watching the landings – none of what NASA was doing during that time was for the sake of space exploration or science. The entire program was nothing but the US and USSR sublimating the Cold War into the “Space Race” rather than starting a thermonuclear WW3.

In this, our space program was quite similar to our Interstate Highway System, more properly named the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, which President Eisenhower had built for the purpose of improving America’s ability to get our troops to anywhere in the US, especially to embarkation points, quickly.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

— T.S. Eliot
Murder in the Cathedral

What was and is also sadly similar is that NASA was allowed to languish just as the Interstate Highways were allowed to more and more fall into disrepair when the fear, pride, and perceived need and value that engendered it lapsed with the passing of time and reduction of the specific societal triggers that provided its impetus.

Yes, it could properly said that we fell to T.S. Eliot’s last and greatest temptation and the treason we caused and suffered from was the misplacing of our nation’s moxie.

Tags: America | American Exceptionalism | Armstrong | Cold War | History | Interstate Highways | Moxie | NASA | Politics | Pride | Society | Space Program

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2015 at 7:54 am and is filed under Politics, Society. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Obama has chosen to “repurpose” NASA as both a means of promulgating the AGW hype and as a Muslim outreach program, all the while cancelling its programs and cutting its budget. Insofar as Obama is concerned, NASA needs to look downward and inward not upward and outward. Space exploration is right out. It’s just too costly.

But if it’s that costly, how can we have this:

Boldly Going Where NASA Can’t Afford To Tread

If a space program is so expensive that the Obama Regime has to curtail NASA’s efforts, how could a small Washington DC metro area restaurant chain, Sticky Rice, with only for restaurants be able to afford to collaborate with RVA TV and Bark Marketing to launch one of their Godzirra rolls into space – and how could they manage to do it in the first place?

OK, for the sake of precision, Sticky Rice didn’t actually put a Godzirra Maki into space. They didn’t breach the Karman Line and only managed to send their sushi into the middle stratosphere.

Sticky Rice should rename their Godzirra roll. They should call it the Fukyu-Obama Maki.

If a small business can, using commercially available equipment and materials send, film, and successfully recover sushi to the edge of space then it’s disgusting to claim and laughable to believe that America needs to curtail space exploration.

Tags: America | Food | Food & Drink | Marketing | Maryland | NASA | Obama | Politics | Science | Seafood | Space Program | Spaceflight | Sticky Rice | Sushi | Technology | Virginia | Washington DC

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 at 11:24 am and is filed under Food & Drink, Politics, Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011 Space Shuttle Atlantis will complete STS-135 and land for the final time, marking the end of NASA’s  30 year long Shuttle Program.

This the ending of a generation long era and is a bittersweet thing. Many people will miss both the Space Shuttle and America’s manned spaced program, which has probably ended as well.

Nostalgia aside, many people believe that we’ll miss America’s Space Program for a wide variety of tangible technological reasons, citing the plethora of technologies that they believe were either developed by NASA or at NASA’s request.

Perhaps happily, much of what they believe was done by or specifically for NASA wasn’t as the former chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland and founder of Washington Office of the American Physical Society, Dr. Robert L. “Bob” Park has repeatedly stated.

Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud: In 10 well-written essays suitable for a lay audience, Robert Park uses pathological science as a basis for far-reaching discussions on science, society, and the misinformation that reaches the public.

Dr. Park Touches upon everything from Deepak Chopra’s “quantum alternative to growing old,” and “free energy” machines, to the unwarranted hype surrounding the International Space Station.

Like some critics I disagree on some points with Dr. Park and think that he has underplayed the advances in science and technology came as derivatives of the Space Program. Voodoo Science is certainly worth reading however. It sets a framework from which the reader can move on to rationally approach scientific and technological advances as they truly are as opposed to how they are presented to the everyday layman.

Tags: Fraud | Junk Science | Lies | Myths | NASA | Robert Park | Science | Space Program | Space Shuttle | Stupidity | Technology

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 at 8:50 am and is filed under Books & Reading, Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.