More outrageous waste

Is there, somewhere, an award for the most senseless news of the year?

How would the just deceased, retired Sen. William Proxmire word the citation in one of his hilarious and invaluable "Golden Fleece" awards, for the latest news from NASA?

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In what is noted as "Special to the Washington Times," Philip Chien reports the following:

NASA's spacecraft have explored all of the planets in the solar system except for distant Pluto – until now. The New Horizons spacecraft, scheduled for launch next month, will be the first to visit the tiny icy world at the outer edge of the solar system ... The New Horizons project will cost taxpayers roughly $650 million.

And what will this long, long trip to Pluto consist of – for our more than one half a billion dollars? (Are you sitting down?)

"New Horizons will speed by Pluto at more than 30,000 miles per hour. That limits the amount of time to take the highest quality pictures."

This "Special to the Washington Times" does not tell us who on earth was responsible for this $650-million-dollar, 30,000-mile-an-hour Plutonian Flyby.

Whoever is responsible should be fired and this outrageous waste canceled.

But NASA scientist Alan Stern is quoted as saying: "This is in a very real sense the capstone of the initial reconnaissance of the planets that the United States has led for the world since the 1960s."

1. Did you know this thrilling fact that the United States has led the world in initial reconnaissance of the planets?

2. Now that you do know, do you believe that such planetary reconnaissances are worth the billions of dollars they cost?

3. How many billions did this add to our national debt – and why does Congress tolerate such outrageous space waste?

Moreover, consider the following as well:

A three-stage Atlas rocket will accelerate New Horizons to 8 miles per second making it the fastest spacecraft ever. But even with that speed record, it will take New Horizons a decade to reach Pluto. If New Horizons launches between Jan. 17 and Feb. 1, it will pass Jupiter in 2007 – using that giant planet's gravitational field to pick up extra speed – and encounter Pluto in 2015.

But if the spacecraft launches between Feb. 2 and Feb. 14, it will have to take a slower route to Pluto without the Jupiter flyby, arriving between 2016 and 2020. After mid-February it will not be possible to launch New Horizons for another year.

New Horizons will be racing Pluto's winter, when the temperature drops to minus 380 degrees.

Think about that, ladies and gentlemen – 380 degrees below zero and we are spending $650 million of our taxpayers dollars so we can fly by Pluto at 30,000 miles per hour!

And if this seems to you to be a ultimate folly of colossal waste, consider the following additional opportunity for NASA extremist exploration:

If the New Horizons spacecraft remains in good condition and additional funding becomes available, the spacecraft will be aimed toward one or two "Kuiper Belt objects," mysterious icy worlds which can barely be seen in the largest Earth-based telescopes. Mr. Stern called the Kuiper Belt "the largest structure in our solar system, dotted with almost a half-million worlds and worldlets that are 4 billion years old."

Think about that, too! And multiply 500,000 worlds (and worldlets) times $650,000,000. That equals $325 trillion!