The short answer, according to Lord British? Sometimes both.

Richard Garriott has written another article for the Huffington Post, looks at some recent political fracas that have involved America’s astrouants.

Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan and James Lovell recently attacked NASA’s new plan for space exploration as “grounding JFK’s space legacy.” They are wrong. They are stuck in old ways of thinking and not up to date on what is actually happening. Gone is the national imperative of the Cold War race to the moon. Gone are the days where huge portions of the civilian and military budgets were spent to prove our national superiority.

Today, I find myself in a position where I believe I am as much of an expert on the future of space exploration as these early heroes. I serve on the NASA Advisory Council, and am a member of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. I also own stakes in numerous aerospace companies, and recently have flown to space myself. This is a subject I know fairly well.

Now we must and can prove that exploration is actually worth the strategic investment. Boldly going beyond the Earth-Moon system is the next great task that beckons us. But, it will take more time and money than can be easily apportioned. We can no longer just assume the American people will pay for whatever these astronauts would like for us to do. We must develop plans that can survive economic cycles and political cycles. And that is what NASA is doing right now!

NASA’s new plans will, in the next few decades send people far beyond Earth, and shepherd in a new golden age of human space exploration! I have written some about this in a previous iteration of this blog, and will provide even more detail soon.

He goes on to discuss the rather large group of astronauts who recently co-signed a letter requesting that NASA refrain from weighing in too readily on the issue of anthropogenic climate change. He then goes on to offer his own opinion on the matter, but ends by suggesting that the reader take neither the astronauts nor his own opinions as their own, and urges personal investigation of the issue by consulting experts in the field (climatology, specifically).

It’s a rather more overtly political piece; some may find it agreeable and others may find they disagree rather strongly. Still, as political pieces go, it strives for balance (or should that be Balance) more than most.