When did we become a nation of cowards? I spend the last two days with two 88 year old ladies, my mother's birthday. While waiting on them I spent yesterday morning watching the entire series on The Planets, aired on one of those science channels. It struck me that we are now almost entirely without a viable space program when we should have already colonized the moon and begun mining asteroids for their minerals. The required energy is free and without any environmental consequences. The raw materials are all there for the taking, no need to negotiate property rights. We would not now be wringing our hands over Canadian tar sands and nationwide pipelines. We wouldn't need it.

It seems to me that the expense and danger of expanding out into space is much less than was faced by those Europeans that colonized the North American continent and even less than the dangers faced by those that originally colonized the Americas. We wouldn't even need to kill of any preexisting populations to do so. So, when did we become so cowardly as to cease the effort? Back in the 60's it looked like we were getting a pretty good start at it. We even managed to land men on the moon and get them back again. No, I don't think that was all Hollywood fakery.

It can't be the danger so much. Most all the governments of this planet seem perfectly willing to bring death and destruction to other people and to send their own into harms way. So, what is it that has made us so cowardly? Think of the jobs it would create if all the world's governments decided to quit spending their time and resources on death and destruction and started to act constructively. Think of all the parkland and open spaces we could have if we moved all of our heavy industry off-planet. Gee, we might even be able to head off the global warming issue if we quit spewing all those exhaust fumes into the atmosphere.