Pluto or Bust

My brother Jay sent me a link today about the launch countdown of the mission to Pluto, called New Horizons by NASA. I’d already read about over the weekend, after finding an article about it more-or-less by serendipity, as usual on the Internet. As a kid, I would have already known about it, because I kept up with such things, even without the Internet. These days I’m not the avid space enthusiast I once was.

Still, I’m glad there’s a mission to Pluto. This is a real achievement. People doing what people should be doing—exploring. The US government doing what it should be doing—paying for exploration. I have no objections about paying taxes for that.

The only thing that bothers me is the namby-pamby name. New Horizons? It sounds like a New Age spa. Is this in the tradition of machines that have explored the Solar System—Mariner, Pioneer, Viking, Voyager, even the Mars Rover? No. Marketing consultants dreamed that one up.