Ars Pro Week Day 3: We promise not to shoot Eric Berger into orbit

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If you're reading this, you're probably interested in space. I sure am. It's why I took a job writing for Ars nearly five years ago-the editors promised me I could cover the space industry full time, however I wanted.

And so I have. Few of my peers possess this kind of limitless freedom. For example, when I worked for the Houston Chronicle, I always had to be at least slightly deferential to the local NASA facility, Johnson Space Center. No longer. Great people. I have a lot of friends there. But if NASA is taking 11 years to develop a parachute, y'all are doing it wrong.

I have two goals with my space coverage. One is to get as close to the truth as possible. The second is to kick this industry in the ass so humans actually get out there into the cosmos and begin exploring the worlds around us. I was born a few months after Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt climbed aboard the ascent stage of the Lunar Module, blasted off the Moon, and came home. And I'm rather disappointed that humans have yet to dip their toes into deep space in the nearly half-century since.

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