Andrew, that piece really is worse than you say.
The trouble is that the space program’s purposes are inseparable from its Cold War-era context.
No, the trouble is not that they are inseparable–it’s that we’ve never made a serious policy attempt to achieve such a separation.
He gets the NASA budget wrong (it’s closer to twenty billion than fifteen). That doesn’t change his point (in fact it strengthens it, to the degree that it’s valid), but it’s sloppy. It’s also not clear that the plan will require a significant increase. That was one of the selling points of it–that by putting down the Shuttle program, we can shift funds to the new activities.
Along the way, the space commission he appointed has offered up a smorgasbord of absurd side benefits, such as possible improvements in our (so far non-existent) ability to deflect threatening incoming asteroids, of the sort that may have severely disrupted life on Earth as recently as 35 million years ago.
I guess his point is that it doesn’t happen very often, so it’s not a benefit. He’s probably unaware that if the Tonguska event had occurred on the eastern seaboard of the US, instead of in Siberia, we could have lost millions of lives only a century ago.
It really is a typical “why pour all that money into space when we have so many problems on earth?” rant. Nothing new here.
[Update in the afternoon]
Jeez, I’m almost starting to feel sorry for the schmuck. Dwayne Day really goes after a gnat with a howitzer in the comments section.
I’d say that he’s been pretty thoroughly discredited. Unfortunately, most of the PI’s readers probably don’t read this blog.