Or it might mean that I saw the point of Phil’s post, and all you saw was something to be upset about and a reason to insult people.

Some socialism is a good thing, like health care and social security. Since McCain collects his SS check, do you want to call him a socialist too?

Since you are utterly self-reliant I take it you will not be calling the police when I come to your home to kill you and take your hard earned money.

And how the hell did you post this without using the ARPA-funded internet!?

Why can’t we edit? Not meaning to sound ungrateful here (esp. having just pointed out the ingratitude of others against NASA) but sheesh!

Oh & Phil, your silly ‘no swearing’ policy has me sounding very much like Ned Flanders and I’m not like that – very frustrating.

… But I love your blog all the same!

Socialism is NOT what most Americans (USA-ites for the geographical purists) think it is.

It ain’t Leninism, nor Communism any more than neo-conservatives are neo-nazis.

The happiest, most cosmopolitan and enlightened societies and nations in the world – Iceland, Denmark, Holland, Sweden, Ireland*, – tend to have good mix of socialist and capaitalist features. These incl. good governence -accountable, democratic leadership and, yes, are also high-taxing and high social security and welfare providing.

Free market capitalism that is unfettered gets you in a “Grapes of Wrath”
type nightmare. (Read some Steinbeck folks – he was one US author and socialist that got things spot on.)

As for private vs public space travel – judge them by their results
NASA had men inspace inthe 1950’s,the Soviet’s had thefirstman inspace, first woman in space and many successful missions back inthe 50’s and still
today. NASA got 12 people to the Moon. Built and flew the shuttle withgretasucccesses and theoddd catastrophic failure.

Public space agencies (on behalf of all the people for everyone’s benefit)
have launched and run all the space-probes to date from Magellan and Viking to Voyager and have sent four spacecraft beyond our solar system past the
orbit of Pluto!

Private space agencies (for the personal profit of a few superwealthy elitists) have … hmmm .. looks hard.. gets out microscope .. Ah yes, one or two sub-orbital flights with a couple of people pout in zero gee for a
couple of minutes. So today they are where NASA was in the late 1950’s -60’s ..

Those results speak for themselves. And much as I’d cheer Branson, Rutan &co on they say that Public is almost literally lightyears (or okay 100’s of AU at least!) ahead of private as far as space exploration goes.

Lets not knock NASA too hard or be too ungrateful about them considering the
magnitude of what they’ve achieved folks.

rivate is still

* For the record I’m an Aussie. Iceland topped the world according tohappiness and standard ofliving ina recent Un poll with theothers pretty much globally recognised for having good standards of living and being generally positive places tolive. The USA -soad tosay is along, long way behind them.