(couldn't decide where exactly to post, so picked Lectric's post to respond to -- as I do have one thought on that....)

Friday evening I nominated "Peter Nevsky and the True Story of the Russian Moon Landing" by John Calvin Batchelor to my book club and it is now on the 2003 schedule. I have to say that when the clock radio turned on Saturday AM, I seriously thought I was dreaming.

After an overdose of CNN, I went out to work on the car (rewiring a few things) then I got an itch for a burger. I still had 15 pages left of "Nevsky" so took it with me. Hmmmm, when reading in a restaurant, I always thought it was a signal for other folks to leave you alone. No such luck.... three fishermen come in. Fisherman 1: "Hey, what're you reading?" (I show 'em) "Hey, what's it about?" (I say the supposed tragic Russian landing on the Moon). Boss fisherman: "Hey, I saw this documentary that we never landed on the Moon" (Me; "Uh-huh. Was it believable?" -- thinking that a gajillion tax dollars just went to refute this "documentary"). Boss Man "Well, do you always believe everything the governbment tells you??"

I told him "Yeah, I always believe what the government tells me" and went back to my book.

So these are my choices: Either believe "alien autopsy" stuff I see on Fox or believe everything the government says. I got the depressing feeling that the same three guys will be sitting there in 10 years (having just watched some supernatural expose documentary on Fox or "History" Channel) talking about the 7 people who disintegrated over Texas and how they never really existed -- just a big scheme by the government.

Lectric First off, what does the space program have to do with going to war? .

I just finished doing my taxes and verified that something between 25-35% of my income for 2002 went to the Feds. I think of myself of a federalist, so I don't generally gripe about that or kill myself to find ways to cheat or minimize my taxes. I just pay. I have to say that it is tough, though, in the times of the Reagans and Shrubs to pay that money with a smile on my face. They make like the pie is very elastic -- that we can have 600-ship navies, wars on Iraq and NASAs without going into massive debt. I'm no economist, but I know that is not true. Right now, I'd rather see more money tilted to things like NASA than our Iraq sequel. So maybe that's what NASA has to do with it....for me anyway.

All of the weekend's events made me thing of a book I read a few years back and enjoyed -- "Off the Planet" by Jerry Leninger (astronaut who took the length-of-stay record for American men on Mir). When thinking about the Russian space program's capabilities and relationship with ours post-Columbia, I think this book is interesting.

CNN and the networks seem hard at work digging up the personal angles on the disaster. It's hard to have positive feelings about all this right now -- about "the good that will come out" of this. If their is one "human angle" story that seems to sincerely hit the "touchie-feelie" side of this in a way that doesn't rankle, I think it has to be the story of Kalpana Chawla JMO.

I fear, though, that investigations are going to find organizational iimperfections, compromises, short-cuts. I'm concerned about whether we are willing to look again at NASA's situation with a dispassionate eye. Who is the Richard Feynmann for this set of hearings?