While I'm not a major space geek, I am a moderately-interested fan of the subject. I enjoyed Apollo 13 and From the Earth to the Moon immensely and will stop down for some interesting space news just about any time. Unfortunately, this means I hardly ever pay attention to NASA these days.
Is there anyone out there who understands why we still send space shuttles up? What can they possibly be accomplishing which could come close to justifying the expense of that program? Does anyone think a moon-base is going to result in some sort of scientific breakthrough? I thought the Apollo programs pretty much proved there's nothing of interest on the moon, which is sorta why we haven't been back in 30+ years.
Well, it turns out NASA's priorities are a bit more screwed up than I thought. Gregg Easterbrook (of Tuesday Morning QB fame) has a great article on Wired.com today which spells it out. He's right – the sooner the govt gets out of the space business and lets Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and the rest take over, the sooner we'll start learning again.
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