So, we lost another shuttle and another seven astronauts. Since I hate to see good men die serving their country, I'm going to keep the NASA jokes to a minimum. (I remember when the Challenger exploded in 1986, jokes had proliferating by lunch time.)

Still, I am not going to go soft on the NASA organization. In not so many words, I hate NASA. NASA is a huge governmental make-work organization. While I agree that the space race to the moon had some desireable political consequences during the cold war, since then it has been all about maintaining funding levels for the huge government monopoly. NASA routinely shoots a full crew into space to do the work that a single unmanned rocket could do. They even try to sensationalize their work by launching the Thanksgiving Day spacewalk or an all woman crew. In my opinion, they exist solely to justify their budget. Of course, I've already conveyed my criticisms of NASA.

NASA is a government run monopoly on space exploration, research, and activity. Their annual budget is over $13 Billion. While some of the research is no doubt invaluable, I don't think it needs to be government funded and monopolized. After all, most inventions come out of the private sector. Seizing taxpayer money at the point of a gun to send up the first gay black female astronaut with a dog named skippy just for publicity purposes seems a bit out of whack to me. Apparently, I'm not the only one that thinks so.