India launched a satellite that will orbit the moon and map its surface. You might wonder why, since the United States has not only mapped it, but they’ve put twelve people on its surface. Tamara has an answer for you:
after we mapped the moon and hit a few golf balls around up there, we just turned our back on the whole thing. Scrapped our huge boosters. Used an outdated, overengineered flying garbage truck as a make-work program for NASA and a pork conveyor for incumbent congressweasels. Got in the way of private progress with government interference that would have strapped airbags on the Wright Flyer and prevented them from flying at Kitty Hawk lest they wound some rare sand flea.
The Chinese have put their own people in orbit more than once in the last few years and Tamara has a few words about this new Asian space race:
The Chinese and Indians are serious about this. This is good. I’ve mentioned before that when I get to the moon I’d like a choice of food other than Happy Family Pork Seafood Rice #5. I was kinda hoping for a Big Mac rather than some soy & curry concoction, though. If we want to get back in the game, I say we tell Americans that anything that happens over a hundred miles up is tax-free, and then stand the hell back.
She’s right. It pains me to see how the United States took what was the beginning of a long journey and treated it like the adventure ended at the end of their own driveway. Such potential, wasted. But as with any goal worth pursuing, someone else sure as hell will if you don’t seize the initiative…or as in this case, if you give up after the first few steps.