NASACAR

I enjoy knowing that NASA gets a few pennies per year from me. For all the reasons we pay taxes, this is about the best use of my tax money that I can think of.

Sure, you might make the claim that "in these tough economic times," it's better to spend that money to fight disease and poverty...to ease the travails of our human conditions rather than spend it on frivolous exploration...

I would suggest that this is a false choice. Why the fuck did we decide that our economic stimulus plan ought to build new freeways instead of spending that borrowed cash on sending men to the moon again? To build a second or third generation Hubble telescope? To measure the curvature of space?

I have always wanted to witness a shuttle launch, but with the 2010 retirement of the shuttle fleet I won't have that opportunity. I will have to wait until 2015 at the earliest to witness the launch of the next generation spacecraft, unless Congress cuts off NASA funding in favor of building more fucking roads to dig us out of our economic quagmire. I might have to wait until 2025.

And I likely will have to wait. This nation is far more interested in NASCAR and the expansion of the ethos of perpetual motoring than it is interested in scientific inquiry. America is far more interested in sending her youth to die in Central Asia than educating her living youth in the sciences. This country is far more interested in Chris Pine's portrayal of Kirk than the beckoning frontiers right in front of us -- our own solar system, our own universe.

We would rather tax ourselves and build ourselves a gigantic paved over freeway slum, tax ourselves to send our Christian warriors to die against the Islamic infidels, tax ourselves to save our bankers and hedge fund managers. Instead of taxing ourselves to hire Americans to manufacture spacecraft, to progress humankind, we elect to push ourselves deeper in debt, deeper into social poverty.

I wish this nation would have the same zeal for NASACAR as it did NASCAR. I personally think we'd be a better people for it.