Between the recent launch of NASA's Orion spacecraft aimed at the eventual human exploration of Mars and the ESA's historical Rosetta mission which saw spacecraft landing on the surface of a comet space exploration has been in vogue recently. Surely here at last is a justification for the leviathan's rule! And we here at The Forum will confess to a certain romantic attachment to the notion of the exploration of outer space. It is scarcely possible to conceive of a nobler, more exciting task than than to venture forth into the heavens, boldly going where no man has gone before. And yet, some niggling doubts must remain in the back of our minds. How is it that on a planet suffering from such abject scarcity that we have the resources to spend trillions to place man and machine into space? And is it really just to use coercive taxation as a means of funding these wild eyed plans? What if the hapless taxpayer who is forced to fund these programs really doesn't give a damn about what is going on beyond the stratosphere. Necessarily government spending does not reflect the goals and the priorities on the people who's money is extorted but is instead the consumptive decisions of bureaucrats.
Instead of applauding these missions and the rest conducted by government space agencies around the world we, as libertarians, should denounce them for what they are - the systematic plundering of the productive class. If space is to be explored or perhaps even one day colonized then let it be done voluntarily with the consent of the people who fund it instead of through the evil machinery of the state.
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