From postcardsfromspace:
Watching the final launch of Atlantis this morning, I finally put my finger on what bothers me so fundamentally about the privatization of space travel.
For fifty years, the accomplishments human spaceflight—all that brilliance and innovation and technology and sheer goddamn pluck—have very literally belonged to all of us.That launch this morning? All that pride, and all that inspiration? It was ours.
Human spaceflight will continue, but it’ll no longer belong to everyone. It’s the difference between a state park and a private garden.
Some things should belong to no one—and to everyone. And this is one of them.
The US government is supposed to be “for the people, by the people.” Corporations are “for getting rich, by exploiting people.”
Going into space now, more than ever, is the ultimate in contrarianism. At one point in human history merely saying the Earth revolved around the sun could get you killed. Now saying it gets you laughed at and called a “space nerd”. The truth about the universe is all but marginalized now. We’ve learned over the past ten years that the truth doesn’t matter in politics or government, now we’ve learned truth doesn’t matter in science and knowledge, either.
I believe we’ve entered the Moronic Period of human history.
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