All the astronauts combined managed to cover an area smaller than Manhattan Island. For anyone to declare that we know all about the moon is absurd, but that won't stop the anti-space nutters. They're convinced that we'll never get off this planet because there is absolutely nothing else in the entire Universe that could possible be of interest. I suspect that my ancestors' neighbors said something similar when they left the farm in Cornwall for the wilds of the Vermont frontier.

I was enormously disappointed when Mir was deorbited. I always thought that it should have been boosted into a higher orbit and left as a museum, but I suspect that the Kremlin had more say in its ultimate fate than Baikonur did.

I wasn't aware that lack of chauvinism counted toward open-mindedness. At any rate, believe it or not, I was hardly pretending. More likely there's been a misunderstanding, why would anyone demand my bicycle?

Odd, in this context I can't remember having taken much of a position, other than a general remark that it is occasionally possible to fix a headache short of decapitation.

Unless you mean my attempt at answering to your "why don't you mind your own business" question -- which is a legitimate one, of course, even when put a bit abrasively.

Finally, beyond misunderstanding or actually different opinions, I'm not sure why you would doubt my sincerity in expressing mine. Why all those "pretend" and "claim to" ?

Well sorry for being thick, I suppose, but what policies or politicians did you imagine me having supported in these posts?

The morons in Congress almost didn't let the Russians be part of the project, even though they were the only country in the world that actually had experience building and maintaining a space station.

putting 100% of our efforts into robotics and AI so that radiation-hardened machines can do whatever it is that's still worthwhile to do in space.

Robots can't colonize an asteroid or moon, and that's one of the truly worthwhile things to do in space. They can prepare the site to a certain extent, but it's not really a colony until Earth life is resident. You're right that sending people to LEO is pretty much worthless, but that's NOT where we should be limiting ourselves to. To our knowledge, the universe is ours for the taking, and only the shortsightness of politicians and businessmen is keeping it from us.

And people try their best to ignore the two most probable extinction scenarios, a nuclear exchange or an escaped/launched bioweapon.

They don't need a Saturn 5 equivalent for a moon base, and in fact it would probably be counterproductive to build one for that mission. Multiple smaller launches should be staged and assembled in LEO, then boosted onto the Lunar trajectory. That was actually one of the configurations contemplated for the Apollo missions, but was rejected early on because the docking techniques had not yet been developed. If the "end of the decade" deadline had not been looming NASA would probably have gone that route and ended up with a much better mission profile.

Actually they're sold the cheap stuff by contractors, since by and large they don't have the real-world experience to know the difference.

Of course you could always go the "large company CEO's office" route, which frequently is a steel-cored door weighing several hundred pounds, coupled with Kevlar between the drywall and the wall studs.

Depending on how deep in the Earth's shadow the effect can be more or less pronounced. I saw one eclipse where the moon was pretty close to black several years ago, apparently this one will be deeper in the Earth's shadow so will be lit up better.

I suspect the reason that this one is getting so much publicity (it's not an uncommon event) is because there are several moderately popular books out about supposed biblical prophecies with that title. There's also a detective novel, a vampire novel and a werewolf novel with that name, and some others. Something about the name drew a lot of attention on Farcebook too.

So does Michigan.

Actually the death rate from measles is 0.1% (US) to 10% (undernourished populations). The risk of complications is much higher than those figures.

You probably believe you have very effectively stung my national pride, or something. I'll get back to you when I have one. The only thing I could possibly take offense on, which is our country being "too politically ignorant" to make decisions for itself, but I'm just not sure what even means.

No argument there, we have enough on our plate (though the influence of Wilders, thankfully, seems to be finally diminishing somewhat).

I understand that my "advice" (really it's not even that, just anecdotal observations) is unsolicited and some would consider it unwanted, while others still seem to make a point of doing the exact opposite merely because "an outsider" made some suggestion.

The difference is, though, that I as a Dutchman am affected by some US policies, much more so than the other way around, obviously. If Dutch policies were somehow affecting you in the US, I am quite sure you would soon learn more about my country than you apparently know now, and no doubt some well-intentioned "advice" will be headed the other way.

That sounds about right.

So you're arguing that the only way to reduce lobbying in Washington is to, well, reduce Washington entirely. I honestly don't know if it's too late, given Citizens United and McCutcheon, but it's probably wise to double check. Wouldn't want to throw away the child with the bathwater, as we say in Dutch. I think the English equivalent might be curing the disease by killing the patient.

You misspelled "corruption".