I find it amusing that these folks were clueless as to the purpose of the Google Lunar Prize when they signed up:

In my first blog, I wrote why Harold Rosen formed the Southern California Selene Group. In short, he and I registered our team to compete for the Google Lunar X PRIZE to demonstrate that a low-cost space mission to the moon could be accomplished and could lead to lowering the cost of some future robotic missions to planetary moons. Plus, we intended to have fun! Harold and I both are strong supporters of space science and robotic space exploration. (For one, I’m an astronomy and cosmology enthusiast.) We love the kind of work that JPL is doing, for example. But we most definitely are not in favor of human space missions. That is not our goal, nor do we support such a goal.

The Team Summit turned out to be a real wakeup call. In the Guidelines workshop that I attended just last Tuesday, the cumulative effect of hearing all day from Peter Diamandis, Bob Weiss and Gregg Maryniak that the “real purpose” of the Google Lunar X PRIZE was to promote the so-called commercialization of space (which I took to mean highly impractical stuff like mining the moon and beaming power to the earth, as shown in one of GLXP kickoff videos), humanity’s future in space, etc. etc., took its toll. I couldn’t help but think “what am I doing here?” When I spoke to Harold about it on the phone later, he agreed – no way did he want to be involved in promoting a goal he does not believe in.

So, what does this mean? It sounds to me like it’s not just a goal they “don’t believe in” (which is fine–they could not believe in it and still want to win the prize for their own purposes), but rather, a goal to which they are actively opposed, and don’t think that anyone should be pursuing. I’m very curious to hear them elaborate their views, but it sounds like they’re extreme Saganites. For those unfamiliar with the schools of thought, you have the von Braun model, in which vast government resources are expended to send a few government employees into space (this is Mike Griffin’s approach), the Sagan model (“such a beautiful universe…don’t touch it!), and the O’Neillian vision of humanity filling up the cosmos.

So when they say they don’t support such a goal, does that mean they oppose it, and would take action to prevent it from happening if they could? Sure sounds like it. And they take it as a given that lunar mining is “impractical,” but is that their only reason for opposing it, or do they think that it somehow violates the sanctity of the place, and disturbs what should be accessible only for pure and noble science? I’ll bet that they’d prefer a lot fewer humans on earth, too.

[Via Clark Lindsey]

[Update late morning]

Commenter “Robert” says that I’m being unfair to Carl Sagan. Perhaps he’s right–I was just using the formulation originally (I think) developed by Rick Tumlinson, though Sagan was definitely much more into the science and wonder of space than were von Braun or O’Neill… If anyone has a suggestion for a better representative of the “how pretty, don’t touch” attitude, I’m open to suggestions.