Satallite refueling and menstruation

Our 'bigoted' grandparents looked to space? Sure, if they were white.
A lot of our grandparents looked to the day that they didn't have to
send their kids to an inferior school, just because those kids were
the 'wrong' color. A lot of our grandparents looked to the day that
they didn't have to sit in the back of the bus.

The "good old days" sucked. Yes, they really did. And we weren't any
closer to having a space-faring society than we are today.

Indeed, the Golden Age of Space was in the turbulent 1960's, with
their civil rights marches, the women's liberation movement,
desegregation, greater availability of contraception and an attendant
sexual revolution, and all that other dreadfully liberal stuff. Then
we had a conservative backlash, the further Apollo missions were
canceled, and we so abandoned space that many young people today doubt
that we ever landed on the Moon at all!

Let's stop pining for a past of moral wonderfulness that never existed
and move into the future. Getting rid of the government's new-found
power to listen in on whim and dissapear citizens on whim would be a
good place to start.

I wonder how much space infrastructure you could build with
$289,400,000,000?

Oh, about religious groups being "the big evil. They have the very bad
manner to preach. And to tell us we are siners." Hey, if that's all
they had the "bad manners" to do, I wouldn't have a problem.
Unfortunately, many of them also have the "bad manners" to pressure
the gub'mint to pass laws telling us "sinners" how to live our lives,
whether we happen to share the religious views of that group or not.
And when that doesn't rid the world sin, some of them have the bad
manners to chuck bombs.

As long as they limit themselves to preaching their values, I say good
for them. But stop trying to use the force of government or the force
of explosives to MAKE the rest of us follow their values.