LOST IN SPACE

        In the midst of all of the finger-pointing and hypocrisy coming out of the Uniparty's electoral spectacles, most Americans probably have forgotten (if they ever knew about it in the first place), that two American astronauts have been stranded now for two months on the International Space Station. Certainly no candidates have been talking about it, and the Media has largely ignored the story, but it has caused some discussion in the foreign press, particularly on social media. 

      NASA, which a few decades ago was one of the most respected government agencies, was among the many raffled off during the Bush/Clinton/Obama Era to private corporations. The Neocons argued that Space Exploration was a waste of taxpayer money and that Wall Street could run the space program for profit better. To his credit, former Vice-President Mike Pence did lead a spirited effort to change all of this, but Americans decided that having a panic attack over a flu outbreak necessitated a regime change; so we're back to business as usual. 

     Privatization (so-called) had about the effect one would have predicted: billionaires spending money on vanity projects while other countries---once decades behind us in space exploration---have caught up with us and surpassed us in many fields. The current problem began earlier this year when China announced the success of its Chang'e Lunar Probes and launched the highly advanced Chang'e-6. Politicians up for re-election began to panic and demanded that the US prove its Alpha Superiority by putting people in space again. Boeing, one of the de facto Corporate owners of NASA rushed a project to put astronauts (chosen to represent diversity of course) into space. Everybody hoped that this publicity stunt would bear fruit in the opinion polls, but unfortunately Boeing's space shuttle broke down and there's no way to get the team back---unless we ask China or Russia to do it for us. In an Election Year, that's off the table. Wall Street considers astronauts as expendable as they do politicians.

      All of this is shameful enough; but what has caused the recent controversy is the news that Elon Musk---another of NASA's de facto co-owners is assembling yet another vanity project for some his billionaire friends while our astronauts stay stranded. 

    "The mission, slated for launch on August 26, comes at a time when two astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have been stranded for months due to a malfunction in Boeing's spacecraft." China's media noted, "According to the US space news portal space.com, American billionaire Jared Isaacman will command the Polaris Dawn mission. The mission, announced in 2022, will test new spacesuits for SpaceX during a planned two-hour spacewalk during the five-day mission, according to the space.com. Polaris Dawn will complete several orbits before raising its maximum altitude to about 1,400 kilometers - higher than any human has flown since the final Apollo mission in 1972."

     Anybody who considers this objectively would see the obvious problem here: turning our Space Program over to Wall Street Oligarchs has been a disaster. But we hardly can hope for objectivity when these same Oligarchs control entire media sectors and companies like Boeing are stuffing huge sums of lobbying cash to one party and people like Musk are funnelling millions to the other. "Against such backdrop, Chinese space watchers on Wednesday criticized that US space industry saying that it has become overly driven by capital interests, neglecting fundamental astronaut safety," again stating the obvious. 

     I don't know what is going to happen to these two astronauts: they'll probably have to wait until November at least before anybody does anything. It's not fashionable in this market-driven age to claim that there really are some programs that the Government needs to run; but I also suspect that had a similar situation happenened in the mid-20th Century it wouldn't have met with this level of public and political apathy.

    Meanwhile, though, the nation will go on focusing on flame wars or scapegoating China simply for doing what we should be doing. While the Elites go on aggrandizing themselves at the expense of the nation, the only Space Program that Americans today care about is what kinds of drugs can take them into orbit.