Cocoa Beach, for those who don't know, is/was the bedroom community for the space center. It is a barrier island four miles off the Florida mainland, separated from the coast by Merritt Island and the Intracoastal Waterway. Much of the town was dredged up from the Mosquito Lagoon (like the way they built Boston). My stepfather was a director of the Delta Missile program -- I've been to the fortified concrete "blockhouses" where the launches are directed, I've been into the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building, that giant structure you've seen on tv in which the rockets and Space Shuttle were built), my wife and I attended the first two shuttle launches at the official press site. This is all very dear to my heart.

Most of the kids in town also had parents who worked for NASA, or some branch of the space industry. When I was in high school, many of my friends worked summer jobs at the space center, gluing heat tiles onto the Space Shuttle. Sure beats serving burgers.

A lot of people are flip about this because they don't realize the impact the entire space industry had on their lives. Everything from microwave ovens to modern medical research is a result of what NASA accomplished. Today, we're willing to piss it all away, years of investment by way of our tax dollars, and Americans scoff -- "What has going to the moon done for me?!" Try nuking your frozen pizza without the research done by NASA, just for starters. An entire town, actually several towns, have been destroyed by Bush's decision to out-source our space program to for-profit foreign companies.

It's not an unfair question to ask....What the fuck is left for Americans to do? We've sold the soul of our country to China and India, and now Russia. Get your degree in Gourmet Burger Flipping, my friends. It seems our only remaining industry is serving the nouveau riche.