Re: your Dec. 11 editorial, “Heading to the moon for good�:
Your editorial waxes eloquent about the prospect of a manned space station on the moon. You speak of “the potential and opportunity of space exploration.� Pray tell us what exactly are these potentials and opportunities that would justify the many billions of dollars that NASA is going to spend on this adventure? We have so many problems on our own planet that go unaddressed because of lack of money. How can we possibly justify wasting billions on satisfying the curiosity of a small number of people while 3 billion people go to bed hungry every night? You must know that half the world’s population has no ready access to clean water. What about them?
NASA is a huge bureaucracy that really got rolling in the early 1960s because President Kennedy pledged to put a man on the moon before the end of that decade. At that time, we were all worried that the Soviet Union was outpacing us in science, as evidenced by Sputnik. For those of us who had the great thrill of watching man first step on the moon, it seemed worth the cost. But since then, NASA has done what every bureaucracy does: find ways to preserve itself. This is just the latest chapter in that effort.
No one of conscience could possibly justify this fiasco.
— Stuart Kingsley, Oxnard
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