Checking in on Mr. Lasker
You might recall a little over a month ago John Lasker wrote an article for Wired News about space weaponization. That generated a lot of controversy for its skewed portrayal of ProSpace, the grassroots space lobbying group, prompting a strong rebuttal from ProSpace and an eventual correction from Wired News, although not after the online publication lost some credibility.
Mr. Lasker is back, writing another article on space weaponization for the “Inter Press Service” and published on Antiwar.com. The article starts out okay, but later veers off in odd directions familiar to those who read the Wired News account: that the Air Force and NASA “collaborated to monitor and plant moles within an international space-peace activist group” and a mad rush to the Moon by the US, Russia, and China (which “has a manned moon mission in the works for the next decade”, Lasker claims) to seize helium-3:
The advent of a well-guarded moon base that’s mining for the ultimate energy source may sound laughable to some, [Bruce] Gagnon concedes. “[But] then why is Halliburton building a drill for Mars?” he asks.
Actually, Gagnon’s right: the whole concept, as Lasker presents it, is laughable.
collaborated to monitor and plant moles within an international space-peace activist group”
Hunh. When I discovered Bruce Gagnon’s activist group I was curious enough to join their Yahoo mail list. I made no secret of my interests or affiliation – and was promptly branded a spy from big aerospace. Very amusing as Liftport at that time was perhaps eight people.
There’s a neat symmetry to it, in that for ~45 years comm, remote sensing and now navigation/location have been the only space applications that have paid for themselves — whether in the commercial market or the pseudo-market of what DoD actually buys and launches, as distinct from zoomy slide shows.
In other words, Gagnon’s crew will actually have something to worry about only when and if the rest of us actually have CATS.
Haliburton is considered to build the drill for Mars core samples because they have expertise at this sort of endeavor that others lack.
Want a tire? Call BF Goodrich, Want a Geologic core drill? Call Haliburton.
I suppose Mr. Gagnon must have surrendered Occam’s Razor at the door when he was protomoted to full Moonbat.