The idiotarians over at TomPaine.com think that we have to make a choice between "the children" and the moon. Thomas James, thinks...errr...otherwise.

I have made two notable statements in my life thusfar:

1) Internal consistency is the halmark of competence.

This one below applies here:

2) Binary thinking is the calling card of the small minded.

I might also add that there is no "Common Sense" to be found amongst the idiotarians at tompaine.com

Excerpted from a comment I left over there:

You ain't seen nothin' yet. Any space initiative, including private ventures with no public funding whatsoever, will ignite the full fury of the stasists. It's the ultimate end-run around their mania for containment and Federalization of civil society. There are going to be some spectacular fireworks when this mentality collides with the actual interests of children (and their parents), among which space exploration ranks near the top.

My only addition to Thomas' criticism is that there is abundant evidence that an American family living at the poverty line today is distinctly better off than a family at the median income during the Apollo era. This weakens the case for redirecting resources to alleviate the supposed dire straits of the underclass still further.

Common sense, in general, isnt all that common

We had a deal. Thirty years ago we agreed to stop "sending men to the moon" and turn what was left of our space program into a giant works project here on Earth. In return they would get to use that money (and a whole lot more) to make people better off through better education, better health care and better social services. They haven't lived up to their end of the deal, so it's time to admit failure and try something different.

I've made this comment in other places.

In 2000 we spent 26 times as much on K-12 education alone as the NASA budget. We spent 100 times as much on health care. Finding reports of shortcomings in health care and education is left as an exercise to the reader. Suggesting that redirecting NASA's budget to those areas will cure those problems induces hilarity, not credulity, in my mind.

Now -- let's consider two wicked questions. Are the critics like those on the tompaine site even aware of how ridiculous their claims are? And why can't NASA and its still numerous defenders even make out this basic case?