indi.ca

I recently read/saw two pieces on space, and America’s role in it. One – testimony by Neil deGrasse Tyson – calls for the US to fund NASA and push for more exploration and innovation. The other – by John Yoo and John Bolton – says, essentially, that space belongs to the US and they can blow it up if they want to. deGrasse, as usual, is extremely forward thinking whereas You and Bolton are just cannibalizing the innovation of the past.

Perhaps I’m biased. With Tyson we are, in meme terms, dealing with a bad-ass over here. Yoo was a lawyer who tried to make torture sound legal, and Bolton was a token ‘Fuck you UN’ UN ambassador for a year. Yet I think their reputations are deserved.

Tyson talks about a patriotic America in positive terms, pushing for innovation, exploration and ‘intellectual seduction’ of a next generation of scientists and thinkers. Yoo and Bolton are just making procedural arguments for unlimited American military power in space, rather than expanding those frontiers.

Anyways, those are just two bits of space talk in the news.