Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells ya she's hurtin' 'fore she keens

Ladybug pointed me towards this Nasa run contest to name the next ISS component. Many of us would like to see the component named "Serenity" after the ship from the wonderful Firefly tv series.

If you have another name in mind, no worries. You can suggest your alternate, lesser name here.

He's right. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

When I add this to Barack Obama's inability to take a strong stand, silly "moderate" positioning on issues like homosexuality (Centrism means taking a position somewhere in the middle between the view that gays are functioning members of society and those that think that gays are evil and must die now) and lack of progressive street cred I have to say there is no way in hell I'd support the guy.

Space exploration, which accounts for about half of 1% of the general budget, should not even be on the table when it comes to cutting spending or changing priorities. Finding and facing a challenge is in our fundamental make-up as a species, not to mention our identity as a nation. The problem is that those without imagination (i.e. conservatives) continue to try and create challenges in pushing for war and creating enemies whether it's the USSR* or Islamofascists.

We need leaders with the foresight to recognize this and the courage to inspire us to face the challenges of saving our environment, fighting hunger and poverty, curing fucking cancer and, yes; exploring the unknown in space and the world's oceans. We need leaders that recognize we're wasting resources in fighting false challenges (Space Shield, anyone?) and that the defense budget should be the first place we look when when we need to tighten our belt. Obama is not such a leader.

This guy was---




(*I am not arguing that the USSR was not a real threat to the security of the United States and western Europe but only that the response in terms of dollars spent on defense was disproportionate to the extent of that threat.)

Who was the best pilot I ever saw? Well, uh, you're lookin' at 'im.

If you think about it the only surprising thing about this astronaut kidnapping story is that it, or something similar, hasn't happened previously.

The astronaut corps is made up of people who are driven. They spend their entire life in pursuit of that goal. They are a group of individuals who refuse to take no for an answer by profession. Of all the type A personalities they are the type A-iest.

It seems to me it would only take a few neurons firing in the wrong direction for somebody with that personality to extend that trait into their personal life in a destructive manner. It was only a matter of time.

A dream that became a reality and spread throughout the stars.

I was sad to hear about the death this weekend of economist John Kenneth Galbraith. I was exposed to Galbraith at a fairly young age by my father who had all manner of Galbraith's books in his big collection of political stuff. Galbraith, probably more than any other economist, was someone who made economics digestible to the average palate. Perhaps even more importantly; Galbraith presented a case that capitalism was best served when it functioned to benefit all elements of society.

The Affluent Society, probably his greatest work, shook the world when it came out in the 50's. In that book Galbraith argued that the measure of the wealth of society could not solely be sized in terms of personal wealth but also through the level of commitment to fighting poverty, public safety and infrastructure. It amounted to nothing less gauntlet drawn across the face of western society, particularly the United States. Galbraith challenged us to do better.

Just before I read of Galbraith's death I had been searching around looking for an article I'd read from Parade sometime in the late 80's. The late, great astronomer Carl Sagan had written a piece proposing a joint manned Mars mission between the United States and the U.S.S.R. The benefits to such a mission were pretty self-evident; increased cooperation between the superpowers, joint scientific advancement, etc. but what really struck me about the idea and what's stayed with me to this day is Sagan's earnest belief that man as a species is coded to find a challenge to surmount, a new world to explore. A mission to Mars would be the ultimate challenge.

While I couldn't find that article I did find this piece by Sagan published in 1992 in The Planetary Report. Sagan summarizes man's exploration of our world and ties into a call to explore other worlds but recognizes that much of the spark of imagination that focused our nation towards these goals has all but disappeared from from public policy.

But since that time, something has soured. The anticipation of progress has been supplanted by a foreboding of technological ruin. I look into my children's eyes and ask myself what kind of future we are preparing for them. We have offered them visions of a future in which--unable to read, to think, to invent, to compete, to make things work, to anticipate events--our nation sinks into lethargy and economic decay; in which ignorance and greed conspire to destroy the air, the water, the soil and the climate; in which, with over 50,000 nuclear warheads still in existence, we permit a nuclear holocaust. The visions we present to our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.

I do not think it irresponsible to portray even the direst futures; if we are to avoid them, we must understand that they are possible. But where are the alternatives? Where are the dreams that motivate and inspire? Where are the visions of hopeful futures, of times when technology is a tool for human well-being and not a gun on hair trigger pointed at our heads? Our children long for realistic maps of a future they (and we) can be proud of. Where are the cartographers of human purpose?

One of the oldest running disagreements between Mrs. Wormer and myself is over the financial cost of our national space program. Mrs. Wormer, being the bleeding-heart softy that she is, feels the dollars that go into the NASA budget are obscene and would be applied much better to poverty or jobs programs. I'm hugely sympathetic to this point but I don't quite see it the same way. I don't see it as either/ or. I see both as necessary. I see both as challenges. I dream that one day we'll end poverty AND reach for the stars.

The overwhelming thing that seperates men like John Kenneth Galbraith and Carl Sagan is that they look at the world as it is, not as they'd like it to be, and see the huge problems facing mankind yet see those problems as challenges; things to be conquered while other men turn away. There is a hairbreadth's difference between man conquering space and man conquering poverty or hunger. Both are the equivalent of the effort to circumnavigate the globe, or climb Everest or fly across the Atlantic. Both will take the application of enormous resources and imagination. Both offer hope.

To get there we'll need realize that we need to have leaders again that recognize that dreams are maps.