My attitude about astronomy, space exploration

I grew up with a keen and warm interest in learning about the planets, solar system and galaxy. This was because I had a neighbor who was a teen age boy when I was only a toddler, and he was an amateur astronomer with his own homemade telescope and observatory. I saw all the the planets through his telescope, even as I was so small he'd have to hold me up to look into the eyepiece of his telescope. He gave me one of his telescopes when I was old enough to want to observe myself. He'd show me slides of his astro photography and gave me his copies of Sky and Telescope magazine. I never seriously considered it as a career because to me it was an aesthetic love of nature rather than an engineering or research endeavor.

I continue to enjoy seeing pictures of planetary, comet, and asteroid explorers, but I must admit my enjoyment has diminished quite a bit in recent years. The primary reason is that I am annoyed beyond description with the attitude that "space exploration provides answers" while people only get worse and worse with understanding the basics of decent life on earth.

For example, many people were inspired in parenthood by, interestingly enough, observing the devotion of pandas in the zoo through webcams. That is understandable. But I wonder what in space is going to tell someone how to be a better parent and human being. I'm so tired of hearing about space being explored "to understand who we are" and "to provide answers." I've got an answer: you are idiots who live on a precious life bearing planet who cannot get along, who have destroyed the family and moral decency, and who wonder "why we are here" and are too dumb to open the Bible or Qur'an and understand what is written there (and the Bible even has easy to understand diagrams and pictures). Sheesh.

Also, I'm not charmed with the personalities of in the space program here in the USA. My former best friend became involved with them through the "Teacher in Space" program and I noticed that she changed into, what she herself called, "a total media animal." Ugh. While I'm not saying that the astronauts have any sort of celebrity complex (to the contrary, I don't think the country notices much of what they do unless there is, God forbid, a disaster), I do think the agency has become the slave to many agendas and that is quite unseemly.

I'm kind of interested in what Japan and China are doing, and congratulate them on their successes thus far. I have always admired the Russian program. Where would we all be without their strength, persistence and common sense? Thank God they did not abandon the sensible rocket and capsule design and come up with that peacock of design like the space shuttle where the humans are way behind the nose of the craft where debris can strike them. How stupid was that. Very.