I feel odd. For four years now I've been waiting giddily for September, especially as the month grows long. Enterprise should be powering up to a highly anticipated season premiere (which, except for the pilot, was never really the case). For some reason my mind still cannot fathom, those empowered to make something sensible and positive of it decided otherwise.

The syndication of Enterprise has begun to a reception ranging from antagonistic to the more merciful apathetic. The antipathy comes from punctured expectations; we trusted them, and you know how the rest of that goes. The reminder of how badly we were swindled pollutes every retransmitted moment. Claims of "viewer fatigue" go beyond annoying to outright insulting (there's a shock); this show should still be going on! As I suppose it does, what with the plethora of enjoyable fan material. Passion still treks on where the paid were unable or unwilling.

Which brings us to the moon. The planet's press reports NASA's ambition to return to the moon by 2018. Right. It'll take thirteen years to do something that only took eight years a generation ago. Why is that? It's not that we can't make the trip; it's a matter of disposition, not ability. The idea of launching a four-person crew ship for extended tours sounds good until the question is asked: To do what?

On a related note NASA recently announced their "Regolith Excavation Challenge," a quarter million dollar prize for the best machine to collect moon dirt for half an hour. That's more like it! Sending four people to the moon only makes sense if we're sending them as the first four of four hundred, or four thousand, or you pick a number. Digging up the moon is meaningless, by hand. Our current goal in space remains to practice and perfect our orbital toehold. Our responsibility as a society goes no farther.

Hold that, I'm too far out of context. Our responsibility as a society should first to be responsible! Those currently empowered to make something sensible and positive still decide otherwise. But it's not too much to think that our efforts should wait for the professionals to step in. Though I'd love to see more robotic missions along the lines of the Challenge, it's past time for a government to return the feet of their agents there. They had their chance.

I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction: A private traveler will set foot on the moon before any NASA astronaut does.


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