Manifest destinies

Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post:

Fourteen months from today, for the first time since 1962, the United States will be incapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone into Earth orbit. We'll be totally grounded. We'll have to beg a ride from the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.

So what, you say? Don't we have problems here on Earth? Oh, please. Poverty and disease and social ills will always be with us. If we'd waited for them to be rectified before venturing out, we'd still be living in caves.

A letter in response to this op-ed:

Dear Charles Krauthammer,

As someone terminally afflicted with a preventable disease owing to poverty, I read with interest your piece on the moon. Fuck you.

Signed,

Dying