Cocaine at NASA!

A week ago Monday, an observant worker at Kennedy Space Center noticed some unusual white powder laying about. (Where, exactly, we haven't been told.) The worker alerted the proper authorities, the substance was tested, and whaddaya know? It was coke! A hefty 4.2 grams of the stuff. I don't know about street prices on the Space Coast, but down thissaway, that'd cost a couple of hundred bucks, at least -- it's way more coke than any mere amateur partier would think to bring to work. Evidently, someone at NASA likes to get crazy.

Hard to blame 'em. These are melancholy months at the Space Center. An employee recently fell to his death on the launch pad, and very soon the gracefully aging Atlantis shall embark upon the farewell voyage of the shuttle program. General interest in space exploration has waned almost into nonexistence since the hero-worshiping days of Yeager and Armstrong, and there's a prevailing sense among those few NASA junkies who remain that the really exciting spacework will now be outsourced to bloodless libertarians like Elon Muske.

Which kind of makes you wonder: Why the hell isn't NASA celebrating its newfound, powdery bounty? This, after all, is an institution that has conducted low-orbital experiments on bone development in foetal quail  -- how is that more exciting, or more relevant to our futures, than cokeheads in space? I'll tell you -- nothing has the potential to inspire fresh interest in our moribund space program like a bunch of highly educated astronauts doing lines in zero g. It's more than science -- it's a reality program. NASA, get on it.