That's One Small Step for... No One

Were you aware that Iran cancelled its space program last week? Did you even remember Iran had a space program? War is Boring has a nice writeup of Iran’s troubled launches, but the real lede got buried way deep in the story:

Iran also suffers from a massive brain-drain, with many of its young scientists leaving the country to work in the West. On Jan. 12, the head of Iran’s industrial Basij—the militia overseeing moral purity in research centers and industries—complained that two of Iran’s space scientists had fled to Brazil.

Science is not going to flourish when you have a “militia overseeing moral purity in research centers.”

Period.