Derek Webber writes that settlement has to be an objective of our space policy.
The Augustine panel noted that if the goal isn’t space settlement, there’s no point in having a human spaceflight program at all. The private people (such as Elon Musk) get this, but Congress continues to fail to do so.
You’d think with all of the money they spend on it, they’d get better results, but it’s almost impossible to prove discrimination, even though it’s obvious to everyone that it is occurring.
Per capita federal expenditures have almost doubled since Carter, and go up almost regardless of which party is in the White House. Ironically, it was steady only under Bill Clinton, but that’s only because he gave himself a Republican Congress in the second year of his first term. George W. Bush had an opportunity top get it under control, but he was a disaster on that front (the biggest reason he lost the Congress in 2006, which led to even more disastrous spending).
Is it an opportunity to take back the culture from the Left? If so, it’s one we shouldn’t miss.
But no hope:
I think that if “wilderness advocates” quoted in the story valued empty ocean more than an oyster farm, they should have paid him to stop, instead of getting the government to make him stop. But hey, that’s just me. The new way to get what you want is to have the state take it for you. It’s different from theft because there are uniforms and everything involved.
Tar and feathers.
Will it go the way of McCain-Feingold?
There’s still plenty to litigate, and Roberts, having been burned by the election, is unlikely to give it any more passes.
It’s the spending, stupid. And not the war spending.
As Glenn’s emailer notes, it started to skyrocket right after the Democrats took over Congress in 2007. Before that we were on track to a balanced budget. The fiscal crisis would have certainly caused a spike in the deficit with reduced revenues, but absent the insane economic policies of the first two years of the Obama administration, the economy would have bounced back just as sharply as it dropped, as it does in most other recessions.
Clark Lindsey, who got an early draft (and the most recent one), has a review of the book. There are only five days, left, and we’re still short over a thousand dollars. And the more I can exceed the goal, the more I’ll be able to promote this.
[Update early evening]
I just realized that I’ve left out a crucial quote in the book, from an eighties teeshirt. Not sure where to put it, though, but I definitely have to include it.
“The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth. The Rest Of Us Will Go To The Stars.”
Might even be on the cover…
Here’s news you can use (if it isn’t already obvious) — the eight worst ones.
Ari Armstrong is favorably impressed:
The long-term benefits of an off-world colony to our lives would be enormous. Not only would such a colony open the solar system to commercialization, reaping unimaginable wealth from the development of vast resources and energy; it would also establish a new frontier with new possibilities for human liberty. Both in terms of industrial development and political innovation, a colony on Mars could be as important as were the British colonies in America. The future of human progress, and possibly even the future of true freedom, may depend on off-world colonization. In any event, human life certainly will be greatly enhanced by it.
I wish that more people understood this.