MADER'S 'BRANTS Back to the Moon, People! August 20, 2004 - I was watching the girls gymnastic competition at the Olympics while browsing CNN.com -cause I’m multitasking like that- when I came across an article online that said that the world population will double by 2050. A whopping 12 billion people! I found this a strange coincidence since on “Face The Nation” Sunday they celebrated the anniversary of man landing on the moon followed by a political ad for John Kerry. And through these series of events my mind came up with this weeks article. ‘Cause I’m a genius like that. I figured out how to solve all the worlds problems: war, famine, pestilence over-crowding high unemployment. Lets go back to the moon! Now I know you’re thinking that Bush just made a speech about that at the beginning of the year. But honestly, how serious is he when he wants to do it in 20 years? I also know that you want to know how this all ties together. Follow along, my kiddies. It’s been a long week so it’s gonna be a bumpy ride. Back in the sixties, Kennedy challenged America to go to the moon in less than 10 years. We succeeded. We landed in 1969, went back a few times, and then stopped. Why? In no small part it was because we had been spending 3 percent of the gross national product to get there. Lots of people bitched and moaned that the money spent on the space program would be better spent taking care of the poor. So president after president in an attempt to garner support from voters and appear like humanitarians cut the space program funding till ya got what we have today: A half finished space station, a grounded shuttle fleet, really expensive one of kind space probes and - yes- we still have poor people. Imagine what the world would have been like if we had kept up our exploration of space at the same pace we had started at in the 60s. We would have bases on the Moon, already have colonies on Mars. Whole industries would exist to do nothing but service the space program. You would have had a technology boom that made the computer driven economy of the 90s look like a speed bump on the great economic highway. Bush wants to go back in 20 years. Why wait? Why is NASA always insisting on reinventing the wheel when it comes to space exploration? We built rockets that got us there before, and our technology has made quantum leaps in the 40 some odd years since Kennedy. We should be able to crank out Saturn V rockets faster than Hyundais off a production line now. It’s not like we don’t have the plans to build ‘em in desk drawers some place. Build plants in Mexico. We could use non union labor. But what about the poor people? Ya know what? There has always been poor people. When Jesus comes back for the second coming there will still be poor people. It says so right in the bible. They get to inherit the Earth. Of course that’s after all us sinners have used it up. Funny how even in paradise, the meek get the shaft. But in the interim we could give poor people jobs as test pilots. They are poor for Gods sake. Its not like they couldn’t use the money. Who cares if it’s dangerous? Got homeless folk? Load em on a rocket and make em colonists. Cheaper than trained astronauts we would have an unlimited supply of people to ship planets far away. And they would be thrilled because they would finally have a home... albeit on Mars or some place like that. But hey! They would also have air conditioning and cable so who are they to complain? As for over population and war and famine, it’s the perfect solution. Bin Laden is pissed that we Americans are here? Fine. We are leaving. Ya want to fight over your little sand box in the Middle East? We will go get our own on Mars. That’s a plank a presidential candidate should use. “My fellow Americans. This place sucks. Let’s go someplace else.” And I really have no clue on how this ties into the whole “gymnast thing” except they defy gravity and are fun to watch. Later, Mader