No Moon Shot

I haven’t seen any public opinion polls on the possibility of a Moon or Mars shot by NASA. I don’t know if I’m in the minority or majority but I am completely against it.

I believe we need to focus our space program on practical programs; items that principally involve this Earth. I’m ok with NASA providing a supporting role with educational programs such as space telescopes like Hubble or exploration craft like Voyager.

Seriously what is there to gain from going to Mars? Sure you can dream up value but it’s not just that–dreams. Our tax dollars are precious and they need to be considered such.

I hear people making statements about velcro and ear thermometers but let’s be realistic. Americans have invested almost half a trillion dollars in NASA. That’s a lot of money.

As individuals we are generally pretty good at highest and best use analysis. If we spend fifty bucks on dinner we will evaluate whether or not it was worth the money. Government simply doesn’t do that. When they spend a million dollars in a project, they will rarely pull the plug regardless on its success. If it isn’t a success they will put more money into it. I think there are two main reasons. 1-labeling a project as a failure reflects badly on those who supported it. 2-Jobs are associated with projects and they want to project jobs.

Some may call the second a worthy thing. I call it ludicrous. If you go eat at a restaurant and don’t like it would you go back because you don’t want the waiter to lose their jobs? Heck no!

I’m not for killing NASA but we can’t justify the money spent when we perform a serious analysis of the opportunity cost of resources committed. We need to refine our list of NASA projects and budget accordingly.