Prime Directive? What's That?

Here's another tidbit showing us all that NASA is hardly more than a dying ember:

This week NASA will attempt to launch three women to the International Space Station, where they will join another female who is already circling earth in a Russian capsule.

Well, the space station is finished. So... If we can't build a decent replacement for the shuttle, return to the moon and explore Mars, we can at least try to keep the feminists happy. After all, we do have all those expensive assets at the Cape that need to be used for something.

Americans Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger and Stephanie Wilson and Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki will launch with Discovery's seven-strong crew on Monday.

There they stand, paperwork at the ready.

Ms Wilson, 43, said she hoped the number of women in space would increase.

I think that we have made a great start and have paved the way with women now being able to perform the same duties as men in spaceflight.

That's just feminist babble. If history shows us anything, women will back off and let the men handle the tough, dangerous stuff. Why? They have much better survival instincts than us reckless males.

That's the truth of it. Men have always been the logical choice for those really grim situations where somebody may not come out alive. Men have always had that "Go out in a blaze of glory" mindset. Women, not so much.

Yes, yes... You can always point out a few women in the past who demonstrated the same "death wish" mindset of the typical glory-seeking male, but they weren't costing the taxpayers an extra few hundred million or so to live out their fantasies.

On the flip side, men have always wanted to buy their women expensive toys, fur coats, diamonds and the like, so why not an expensive space suit? Or a 60 million dollar seat on a spaceship?

The grim bottom line for space exploration has always been the cost. Money for space exploration was - and is - always incredibly hard to come by. Spending hundreds of millions on a separate but superfluous group of female astronauts was 100% non-productive. Great headlines though.

There are always hard choices to be made. NASA - having morphed itself into a political entity, did not make them.

I'll bet whatever you want to bet - if we had kept a operational shuttle fleet - That an all-female crew was in the works.

You know... for the record books.

Is there any other compelling reason? By all means, speak up.