Alan Boyle has a review of the Great Debate, and publishes some emails from his readers. I found this one amusingly (but also sadly) wacky:

The only viable reason for space exploration or study is to learn as much as possible about the stars and planets without man physically interfering. There is no rational justification for manned space exploration! None! Neither does man (American or otherwise) need to colonize the planets. The only reason this country is pursuing space exploration is to locate minerals and natural planetary wealth for private American conglomerates to exploit! Scientists are being used; they are positively stupid and unintelligent if they think for one minute President Bush is promoting space exploration for true scientific study.

Yes, those exclamation marks sure make the argument more persuasive…

Would that his paranoid ravings were true. I’d love for us to be “locating minerals and planetary wealth for private American conglomerates to exploit” (with or without exclamation marks), but I certainly heard nothing about that in the president’s plans.

It’s a little frustrating to be blamed for something that isn’t happening, when we’d like to see it happen–we get all the bad press with none of the benefits.

And why do these loons think that just because they value only “pure science” that everyone does? I wonder where he thinks that the computer into which he typed this monumental ignorance came from, if not by “exploiting minerals and planetary wealth”?