I found a dumb letter to the editor in my new hometown paper this morning (scroll down):

Use money for space travel to develop alternate fuels

Commercial space travel is a dubious and dangerous prospect for mankind (“Private rocket wins $10 million prize,” Oct. 5). It is bad enough that governments are devoting scarce resources to space travel while there should be an intensive program to develop nonpolluting energy sources. All would benefit if a replacement were found for nonrenewable fuels.

Commercial space travel as well as governmental space programs will benefit only the very few and the very rich. Each venture pollutes and helps to destroy the upper layers of Earth’s protective atmosphere. The few who will partake in space travel will leave the rest of God’s creation choking on rocket fumes.

RABBI NASON GOLDSTEIN

Royal Palm Beach

Even ignoring the scientific ignorance about “rocket fumes” (it’s quite possible and even likely that most rocket exhaust in the future will be di-hydrogen monoxide, or a combination of that and CO2), the good rabbi manages to combine the fallacy of false choice (the notion that money not spent on space will be spent on alternative fuels, particularly absurd in the case of private space travel), ignorance of economics (all innovations initially benefit the wealthy, who provide the initial markets needed to drive down the price to those less so), and the mistaken notion that there will be “few” going into space, and that there is no benefit to anyone doing so.