Yet Another Ramble About Space

It sucks that we're going to have to start relying on the Japanese to colonize Mars these days, since America has apparently given up on manned space travel entirely. Now, I talk about space travel, and colonizing space in particular, way more than any rational human being ever should, but it really shouldn't be that hard to see why. There is an inherent wonder, so to speak, in the idea of traveling off into the unknown to see what the rest of the universe is like. I mean, when you see all of the crazy things that evolution has created on THIS planet, it's downright invigorating to imagine how things could be in other parts of the galaxy. It's really not hard to imagine why our ancestors were so desperate to explore the rest of the planet. It's exciting! Who knows what could be out there? And considering how many times they were proven wrong about what they thought the Earth was right, imagine how many things about space we could have dead-wrong. We need to get back out there and start finding things!

We originally started the Space Program to compete with the Russians, right? No one's denying that, right? That's probably one of the few things that everyone can agree on, in fact. So if we're already admitting that we aren't above doing things just because we want to prove to everyone that we're awesome badasses, why are we pretending that we aren't interested in funding a program that's sole purpose is essentially "Oh my God this is so goddamn cool"? Sure, there's also science-y stuff, but mainly we're just doing it because space is awesome. And in an age when people are really not impressed by America anymore, including Americans, why the hell not? We spend plenty of money on other stupid stuff, we might as well spend it on something that might let us get out of the whole global-warming thing.

We started getting really good at this sort of thing, and now we're giving up. No, screw you guys, we can do better than that. Start taxing the rich as much as you possibly can, and then put all the money into space travel. I want to have a moon base by next year.