To go where no man has gone before

John Quiggin, picking up on several of our posts about Roger Bate and Africa Fighting Malaria, comes to the conclusion that our beyond right wing friends occupy a parallel universe. However, in the comments at Real Climate, Ray Ladbury says it is not so bad. He points to Tom Bodett who sagely observes that

Earlier this year the words To understand and protect our home planet were quietly omitted from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission statement. In their place is some vague mandate to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.

If one considers the many tons of hardware NASA has hoisted into orbit bristling with cameras, spectral analyzers, infra-red scanners, laser locaters and snappy little blue emblems; and one considers the invaluable information provided by all this stuff about Earth’s ocean currents, wind patterns, water reservoirs, melting ice caps, carbon dioxide densities, and ozone holes; and one also considers how utterly absurd it would be to drop understanding and protecting our home planet from the job description of the people best suited to the task, then one comes to a single conclusion: This is not our home planet

This must be true, after all

Mars is a good place to practice for the trip back to the true mother planet wherever she is. If anybody is in a position to find it, it’s NASA. So point all those cameras and scanners out to the stars and keep your eyes peeled for a familiar blue ball. Forget about all those atmospheric studies. Go to work on some warp drives and we’ll soon be blasting off right through that hole in the ozone, and into the arms of our long lost cousins. That is, if they’ll have us back once they see what we’ve done to the rental.

Michael Griffin, the NASA Administrator was just helping us on our way.