NASA Pork Just More Space Junk

More space junk - what a snoozer! That's the read I'm getting from the U.S.'s new shuttle flight to the International Space Station.

Advocates contend that NASA's space program is a rip-roaring success. Maybe it is - to the boys and girls at NASA and a few deep-pocketed congressmen.

In fact, space adventures don't mean all that much to the average Joe when daily headlines of recession, panic, stock market dives, government bailouts, job losses and bankruptcies are creating multiple headaches.

The latest space shuttle's payload includes purifying equipment that is supposed to turn wee-wee into drinkable water, a kitchenette and an exercise machine for space station residents. What's next? How about a back porch and an outdoor grill?

Officially, NASA costs federal taxpayers at least $18 billion a year - a fraction of Washington's budget and about the same as we spent on pork barrel projects like the infamous "bridge to nowhere" last year.

Together, the two posts - NASA and pork - represent only about one percent of the federal budget. But, we obviously have to start rigid cost controls somewhere.

While pork is being primed for future cuts, President-elect Barack Hussein Obama is actually planning to add a couple of billion dollars a year to the NASA budget. He probably bought a lot of I-4 Corridor votes with that free-spending promise to Floridians.

Up in Boston, NASA is spending two million dollars to develop a computer program that will help our astronauts combat depression. Will this project help save the world? (Rhetorical question.)

NASA should be axed as soon as possible, if we can find a congressman to sponsor such a bold move. Meteorological services currently in NASA's domain can be moved to another federal agency which already has resources available - say, the Department of the Interior or the Department of Agriculture. Our military can take its share, too.

No doubt, private venture capital will also crave a share of the action. Virgin Airlines is already selling tickets on a space vehicle it's developing all on its own.

NASA's human resources may temporarily swell the labor market by thousands, but these sharpies with unusual backgrounds won't stay jobless for long.

NASA's highly trained staff will be snapped up as teachers in the public sector and as technicians in private companies. Drug research is but one example of a sector always on the move and hungry for new blood, no matter how bad the national economy gets. "Green" energy is another area that will gobble up manpower for years to come.

Often defended as a symbol of national pride, NASA dates back 50 years in response to the, then, low orbital threat of the old USSR and its Sputniks. Surely, we now have more urgent national priorities than blasting off additional space junk. Certainly, there's pride, too, in balancing the budget.

Who says we always have to dominate the space race when unemployment claims are in the millions, foreclosures are rampant, and the auto industry might need a federal bailout soon?

We've already demonstrated we can put a man on the moon and get him safely back to Earth. You don't have to be much smarter than a fifth grader, to borrow from TV, to fathom that we'll never be able to rescue someone from Mars, no matter how many half-billion-dollar space steam shovels we bounce off that planet.

If we somehow do send young blood to Mars, we'd probably get them back as gray beards with one foot in the grave, at best. What's the point of learning how to live in space if nobody's around to give a hoot? Except for a relatively few computer nerds and star-gazing historians with plastic pocket protectors.