Fox News has an article about space tourism.

Mostly it seems to be a free ad for the company “Space Adventures.”

But there were some amazing quotes in it from a NASA spokesman.

“In general, the agency supports private commercial efforts to utilize space,” said NASA spokesman Ed Campion.

There’s a word for this, well, two. It’s called “lip service.” In fact, NASA has been undermining private commercial efforts for many years, at every opportunity.

In fact, the department has been working with private industry for years on some of its projects, including preparing the space shuttle for flight and conducting its missions.

This is disingenuous. They’re calling a captive aerospace contractor, whose only income is a single cost-plus NASA contract, “private industry.” It’s about as far from private enterprise as you can get and not actually be a government agency.

Still, NASA has some trepidation about privately-run space tourism companies.

“Still”? I just love the wording here. Oh, NASA is totally supportive of private activities, and does everything they can to help, even letting them process their precious Space Shuttle, but, you know, they’re concerned. They just might not be up to the job. There might be problems.

“We?ve voiced concern that space exploration doesn?t become an expensive joy ride for people who have big bucks, while the rest of the world gets left out,” Campion said.

Oh, isn’t this rich.

This is the agency that has elevated space travelers to the heights of supermen and women, that has slots for a few dozen, at best, spends billions of our tax dollars to send these superheros into space so we can watch on teevee (while they do things that bore us to weeping, to the point that most stations don’t carry it), but now they’re worried that, because some people want to spend their own money to go themselves, that the world might “get left out”?

That, my friends, is chutzpah with a capital chutz.

Memo to Sean O’Keefe. If you’re going to pretend to want to open up space, at least get someone who can say things that should be on the network news, instead of the comedy channel.

And now, of course, for the coup de grace.

“And we still think space travel is a risky endeavor. You don?t shy away from risk, but you don?t take it blindly.”

Hear us, investors? Better be careful about those private companies–they’re really risky, and they may just jump off a cliff with your money. After all, space is hard, dangerous, and expensive. We’ve been proving it for years…