Gene Healy looks at NASA and asks...

Why?

What's up there that we need?

I hate Space.

Oh, I'm with ya, brother.  It's a long-term goal of mine (and my old TII boss David Theroux has claimed to be enthusiastic supporter of the idea) to write a lengthy tome that would hopefully serve as the definitive catalogue of everything that is repugnant about our federal space program.  Sure, there's lots of wasteful government boondoggles out there, but none -- not even the John Cougar Mellancamp-inspired wails for the U.S.D.A. to keep doling out farm subsidies like so much slop for the piggies -- inspire the kind of wide-eyed, "Awww shucks" boosterism that supporters of NASA are apt to try to pass off as serious public policy analysis.

Given libertarians' collective inclination toward sci-fi geekery, all too many of them have a soft spot for NASA. They'll point to private initiatives to head to the stars, and make the weakly supported claim that such efforts would be legion, if only the government would get out of the way. But very few are willing to entertain the possibility that space exploration, itself, might just be an enormous waste of time and resources from the get-go. Having spent two years in the employ of that grand momma of corporate welfare queens -- the Lockheed Martin Corp. -- I feel it is my duty, as well as an earnest act of contrition for my past sins, to force my fellow libertopians to face that fact.

Now, anybody know where I can score some nifty government grant money so I can quit my job and spend six months writing the darned thing? ;-)

Comments

[Rob H.]

http://www.governmentgrant.com/

Well, you did ask.

[R.J. Lehmann]

This is true. I've always rather preferred Andy Dick's take on Lesko: Free Sex From the Government.