For me Mitt’s ridicule of and attitude toward the issue of our Space policy and Newt’s proposals convinces me that he is a very pedestrian and provincial man, a man of limited vision; head down, eyes focused firmly on the mud beneath our feet, and unwilling (or perhaps afraid) to raise his head up and look up at the immensity and the stars above us.
Over the last century America has led the human race by developing the majority of inventions, medical procedures and drugs, and new technologies that have improved—if complicated—life on this planet for practically everyone. The American people are—or at least we used to be–what was termed in the 1920s as “projectors,” thinking about, speculating about, and exploring and forging our way into the future, dreaming up projects and new scientific theories, inventions, and processes that advance us, our economy, and our lives, and, along the way, have benefited and enriched the world in general.
Corny as it now sounds, Space is really the obvious ”Next Frontier,” that would provide an exciting and challenging outlet for our American “projectors,” inventors, pioneers, and explorers and their talent, energy, and vision, energize and expand our technological sector and the economy, while solving some of our resource and energy problems, and the glaring security issue of the entirety of the human race being stuck on our one, very vulnerable and fragile planet—check out all of the mass extinctions in Earth’s past due to meteorite impacts, when life was almost scoured off the face of the planet, and think of the prospects for our survival if a nuclear, biological, or chemical war should break out, or technological processes went very very bad; it would help if we had our “eggs” (i.e. viable breeding populations) in a number of separate “baskets” i.e. in orbit, and on the moons and plants of our solar system.
Thus, Mitt reminds me of those people who said that trains, and automobiles, and airplanes were nonsense, or that we could not fly in the air or who, earlier on, were saying that if a train or an automobile accelerated its passengers above a few miles an hour they would surely die.
Do we really want such a stodgy, bland man of no imagination, no vision, no spirit of adventure, and no guts—a man who will never, ever roll the dice, make a “risky” decision, or take a chance at Victory–charting our course through the massive problems and dangers the U.S. will be facing?
