Wednesday

The social critic Lewis Mumford found the space program “anti-human.” Space travel, he argued, requires “the total mobilization of the megamachine, commanding to the point of exhaustion all the resources of the state: it is both a symbol of total control and a means of popularizing it and extending it as an ineffable symbol of progress.” Mumford urged the NASA-bedazzled to look homeward: “No comatose space travel, no millennial hibernation, however interminable, promise even a scintilla of what earthbound man has already accomplished.”

I'm reminded of a stop my family made in Huntsville, Alabama to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. They had a big exhibit that featured all the improvements the space program has brought to America. Every single item was an incidental discovery. I wanted to ask, "Can you show me a single benefit from, you know, actually putting a man on the moon?"

I have little doubt, on the other hand, that satellites have improved things for mankind. I see benefits all the time in my office: new satellite survey techniques have revealed that old surveys are inaccurate, resulting in property line disputes, which result in more legal fees. So that's cool (wry smile).