Chris Kraft Speaks

It’s time for NASA (and Congress) to get real:

So come on NASA, wake up! Take the lid off and turn loose the human resources you already have in place. Most of these bright people came to NASA excited about the future, about going back to the Moon to stay and becoming a part of what could be another renaissance in space.

Building a great big rocket is not a necessary expenditure at this time. In fact, the budget that will be consumed by this big rocket will prevent NASA from any meaningful human exploration for at least the next decade and probably beyond. We don’t have to march in place while we wait for the powers that be to cancel it. Let’s be innovative; let’s wake up the sleeping giant and have at returning to the Moon right now.

Unfortunately, NASA isn’t the problem.

A Terrible Week For Liberty Fighters

First Hitchens, and now Vaclev Havel has died. Here’s what Matt Welch had to say about him a few years ago.

Don’t expect the media to make a big deal of it. He was the wrong kind of dissenter, being too American for Europe. The fact that he never won a Peace Prize, while Yasser Arafat and Barack Obama did, says something very fundamental about the corruption and uselessness of that once-honorable achievement. I’d also note (to cite a tweet) that he’s an example of the ancient dictum (that I just made up) that a country can do a lot worse than having a dissident playwright as a president. Mamet, 2012!

[Monday morning update]

More thoughts (from a couple years ago) from Bruce Bawer. And here’s a roundup over at National Review Online.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!