Was this supposed to make any sense?

Robert T. Bigelow, of Bigelow Aerospace and the Budget motel chain, believes he can build the space stations, and others will be able to fly paying customers, including NASA astronauts, into orbit—all for less money than NASA and other government space agencies currently pay to transport and host spacemen and spacewomen.

Truthdig is not entirely convinced this is such a good idea. In a year of oil spills, runaway Toyotas and toxic happy meals, we’re not so sure about turning over exploration of the final frontier—and transportation of our astronauts—to private profiteers.

Apparently the word “profit” remains a dirty word to some. Which is why it continues to amaze that this new policy came out of the Obama administration.

And of course, we know how scrupulous that “non-profit,” NASA is about flight safety. Why, it’s only killed fourteen astronauts in the past quarter century.

[Update a few minutes later]

The other dumb thing about this is the notion that any space activity is “exploration.” This is one of the ignorant straw-man shibboleths of the bashers of the new plan (notably, by the moronic commenter “DCSCA” over at Space Politics) — that “exploration” is being turned over to private enterprise, which they claim won’t work, because it’s not profitable. But all that the plan actually calls for is to get NASA out of the business of transportation to LEO, so that they can finally focus on real exploration.

My opinion piece on the recent SpaceX success is up at AOL News.

Clark has a great roundup of the tweets.