Lileks on space

I keep saying that nobody says it like James Lileks. I wish my writing could be half as creative and entertaining as his. Oh well, I'm still just starting out at this and I'm working on it. Who knows, maybe some day someone will look at what I write and say "I wish I could write like that." But I'm not going to hold my breath.

Someone wrote an article basically lambasting James. His response? See it here.

Most of the article talks about how he feels regarding the plan to return humans to the moon and why America is the country he feels is best suited to do so. Excerpt:

Yes, I know - cheap robots do the job just as well, and sometimes better. Our cosmological imaging programs have returned stunning results. It only seems like we’ve stalled because we don’t see grainy photos of men on another planet driving around and playing golf.

But we’re not driving around and playing golf. More to the point: It has been too long since a human hand put a flag on another planet, and I’d like to see that happen again. It will happen; it's just a question of who does it. I would prefer that the hand be American.

In other words, I’d rather that hand represent the world.

Huh? You say. Wha? A UN flag would represent the world.

No, a UN flag would represent bureaucrats and governments. When I think of an American astronaut on Mars, I can’t imagine a face for the event. I can tell you who staffed the Apollo program, because they were drawn from a specific stratum of American life. But things have changed. Who knows who we'd send to Mars? Black pilot? White astrophysicist? A navigator whose parents came over from India in 1972? Asian female doctor? If we all saw a bulky person bounce out of the landing craft and plant the flag, we’d see that wide blank mirrored visor. Sex or creed or skin hue - we’d have no idea.

This is the quintessence of America: whatever face you’d see when the visor was raised, it wouldn’t be a surprise.

To prove I am a rank sentimentalist: I say the first foot on Mars belongs to a Navajo. No: a Navajo from the Marine Corps. Just because. I can’t think of a reason why not. Can you?

In today's Bleat, Lileks talks more about the plan and addresses its detractors. In particular, he refers to an editorial cartoon which shows a little girl in a wheelchair reading the paper and saying, "They're prepared to spend how much so a man can walk on Mars?" Here's an excerpt:

Yes, we could make that little fictional girl walk if only we spent the money. But curing spinal cord injuries wouldn’t inspire us. Maybe it’s a stem-cell funding research reference - a valid jibe, I suppose, if this was an either-or thing, and people had deeply-held moral objections to a Mars mission. It just strikes me as the same old provincial jibe I dimly recall from the Apollo era: why are we going to the Moon when there are so many problems here?

Because there’s an entirely different set of problems up there.

And the answers might come in handy.

There are many things that it is worthwhile to do. I believe the exploration of space is one of them; apparently the artist does not. Certainly medical research to help people like this little girl is a worthwhile endeavor. But that doesn't mean that it's the only thing that we should be spending money on. Nor does it necessarily follow that redirecting the money intended for space exploration to medical research will make that much of a difference. Yes, we do need to have priorities. If I had to choose between putting a man on the moon by 2030 and curing cancer by the same date, it would be a no brainer. The nice thing is that these are not mutually exclusive options.