“I ate the purple berries!… They taste like… bbbuuurrrnnning”

When all else fails, look to the Simpson’s.

Humanities’ ventures into space could be summed up in two words: Lisa & Ralph. Lisa is a gifted student and everyone looks at her expecting her to excel. When she doesn’t everyone is shocked. For Ralph, it’s a good day when he hasn’t ingested something jagged.

Lisa, is of course, the American Space program. Over the decades America has built a reputation for excellence. Time and again America has pushed humanity further and further out into space. Taking on seemingly impossible feats and overcoming them with dazzling success. Apollo, Viking, Voyager, Space Shuttle, Hubble, Spirit & Opportunity, and the list could go on. But this post isn’t about Lisa. I’m here to talk about Ralph.

Russia is like poor little Ralph. Somehow he manages to hang on and stay in the same class as Lisa, but he’s the butt of everyone’s jokes, and not much is expected of him. Likewise it seems Russia only makes the news when something goes afoul.

“Me fail English? That’s unpossible.”

The other day I engaged a fellow student in a grad school course over the direction of America’s space program. (Which I am wholly in favor of) Inevitably he said “You don’t want to leave it up to Russia do you?”

It seems he’s not the only one who feels Russia is a little too Ralph Wiggumesque. In this article, a Russian author has expressed concern that Russia is losing self-esteem because all their space program is becoming known for is hauling cargo to the ISS, and launching private satellites.

My first thought was to come to the defense of the Russian space program. After all, they have stellar safety record, continued to single handedly support the ISS while the Space Shuttle wasn’t flying post-Columbia, and have been launching numerous private satellites.

“And, when the doctor said I didn’t have worms any more, that was the happiest day of my life!”

But the truth of the matter is that they haven’t pushed any boundaries. They haven’t done any ground breaking science in the last several decades. Russia has gotten very good at launching things into orbit, but outside that what have they done?

Sorry Ralph, you may be the best paste eater to ever live, but at the end of the day all that gets you is a stomach full of paste.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 8:37 pm and is filed under Craig the Rocket Scientist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.