"Hey You Poor Hungry People of the World--Pluto is Important!!!!!"

NASA's top climate scientist says the Bush administration is trying to censure him after he gave a lecture which included a call to use available technology to reduce greenhouse gases and stop global warming before it's too late.

I'm sure he's right, but that's not the point. The point is--what the heck did NASA ever do for the environment? They send up enormous shuttles using fuel tanks bigger than my neighborhood, they toss space trash while they're up there and they spend massive amounts of money on absolutely nothing!!!

Take Pluto for example. Someone got this bright idea--"Pluto is important. Let's explore Pluto. Let's spend 700 MILLION dollars exploring Pluto!" And other people who like to spend other people's money said "That is a great idea. We especially like the 700 million dollar part!"

Yet we have this global warming problem--not a problem, but according to NASA, a crisis! And, according to NASA, the Bush administration should do something about it! I know! How about canceling the Pluto project and spending 700 million dollars buying people hybrid cars? Or we could spend 700 million dollars making other "available energy saving technologies" actually available to the average person. Or maybe we could just spend 700 million dollars making the world we have a better place to live in. We could feed the hungry, educate the poor, create jobs and homes for the homeless... I could find 700 million better ways to spend 700 million dollars. Heck, even buying the world a coke is a better idea than exploring Pluto!

To get a different perspective on this I talked to my seven year old. She has spent hours reading about space, space missions, space stations. She wants to go to space camp when she's old enough. She's gone on fake missions on the NASA website, she knows what to do if she needs to bail out of a spacecraft during takeoff or re-entry, she knows how to find water in the desert in case that's where she lands, she knows all the stuff the astronauts have in those orange suits AND YET this is how the conversation went.

Me-- "Moira, they're spending 700 million dollars to send this probe thing way out into space to study Pluto. Isn't that cool?"

Moira--"Why? It's just Pluto. They haven't even decided if it's a planet yet."

Out of the mouths of babes . . .