BY JODY WEISEL 

                  You have to admire NASA, they spent huge sums of tax payer dollars under the Aegis of President John F. Kennedy to put a man on the moon. But just like vacationing in Atlantic City, New Jersey, once we went there we never wanted to go back. NASA’s version of the “I survived Atlantic City” T-shirt was Tang orange drink and a couple of souvenir rocks. After the highlight reel and back slapping, NASA’s funding was cut and none of us are sunning ourselves on a beach near the Sea of Tranquility. Astronaut is no longer on the list of things kids want to be when they grow up. It ranks way below rapper, ne’er-do-well, beach bum, Facebook master and drain on society.

                  But government agencies have to survive. During the rainy season there is a Flood Control Board and, when it stops raining, they redesignate themselves the Drought Control Board. And NASA has reinvented itself as the government agency in charge of looking for extrasolar planets that could sustain life. They have narrowed the search to something called the “Galactic Habitable Zone” (or Ring 7 to those of us in the know). It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that a habitable planet needs water, mountainous formations to contain dry land and a climate not so cold as the freeze the water or so hot as to boil it—which eliminates Arizona.

      “I KNOW THAT THIS IS A NASA BOONDOGGLE. WE ARE NO LONGER LOOKING FOR LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS, BUT INSTEAD WE ARE LOOKING FOR ALTERNATE PLANETS THAT WE CAN LIVE ON. THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT WE FOUND ONE (NAMED KEPLER 186). THE BAD NEWS—IT IS 500 LIGHTYEARS AWAY FROM EARTH. AT THE SPEED OF OUR FASTEST SPACE SHIP, THE VOYAGE WOULD TAKE 17,000 YEARS TO GO ONE LIGHTYEAR. THAT MEANS THAT YOU COULD ACTUALLY GET A BEER AT ANAHEIM STADIUM BEFORE OUR SPACESHIP GOT LINED UP TO DO A FLY-BY AT THE KEPLER 186 ANTI-GRAVITY SUPERBOWL.”

I know that this is a NASA boondoggle. We are no longer looking for life on other planets, but instead we are looking for alternate planets that we can live on. The good news is that we found one (named Kepler 186). The bad news—it is 500 lightyears away from Earth. At the speed of our fastest space ship, the Voyage would take 17,000 years to go one lightyear. That means that you could actually get a beer at Anaheim Stadium before our spaceship got lined up to do a fly by at the Kepler 186 Anti-Gravity Super Bowl .

               I don’t have trouble spending excessive dollars on things I don’t need. I am a motocross racer, so I am very familiar with useless technology. Kepler 186 is the NASA equivalent of Showa SFF-TAC Air forks? The perfect planet and the perfect air fork are out there somewhere, but they are at least 17,000 years away. The sad thing is that I can’t drive across Los Angeles in the time it takes to fly across the USA in the Concorde, but the Concorde wasn’t allowed to fly across the United States. So much for scientific advancement.

             Today I have a bike with Triple Air Chamber forks, but very little technical support in how to make them work. Worse yet, a set of 2006 Yamaha SSS forks, with antiquated coil springs, are twice as good as Showa TAC forks. My bike also has a programmable ECU to insure that I’ll never have to squint at a brass jet again. But, in the place of brass, I need a computer, $400 worth of software, an accessory pigtail and the base knowledge of how to change the percentages in 94 cells.

             Thankfully for my maladroit mechanic skills, the 2015 Honda CRF450 has air forks that only require 35psi, as opposed to the 170 psi of the Triple Chamber variety. Thanks goodness for small blessings, but of course they added both high- and low-speed clickers to each fork cap. Cool enough, except that one of the clickers is virtually inaccessible unless I take the handlebars off (shades of the Hubble telescope).

             I don’t want to go to Kepler 186 nor do I want to race a motorcycle so complex that it could get me there. I appreciate it when a manufacturer transfers works bike technology over from the race team to the production bikes, but I would be more appreciative if they sent the team personnel with it to keep it up to snuff. Take Honda’s infamous four-spring clutch. It came right off the Honda works bikes—where it worked flawless.  . Why did it work so well, because a Team Honda mechanic changed the clutch plates after every moto (and Honda used special titanium clutch springs).

           In my hands the four-spring CRF450 clutch was confetti. I shredded it in one moto and then went looking for a factory mechanic to make it better again. He was nowhere to be found at my local track. For four long years Honda CRF450 owners suffered with an inadequate clutch. Heck, over those four years, I could have been 1/10,000th on the way to Kepler 186.

           You have to admire NASA, they spent huge sums of tax payer dollars under the Aegis of President John F. Kennedy to put a man on the moon. But just like vacationing in Atlantic City, New Jersey, once we went there we never wanted to go back. NASA’s version of the “I Survived Atlantic City” T-shirt was Tang orange drink and a couple of souvenir rocks. After the highlight reel and back slapping, NASA’s funding was cut and none of us are sunning ourselves on a beach near the Sea of Tranquility today. Astronaut is no longer on the list of things kids want to be when they grow up. It ranks way below rapper, ne’er-do-well, beach bum, Facebook master and drain on society.

           I don’t have trouble spending excessive dollars on things I don’t need. I am a motocross racer, so I am very familiar with useless technology. Kepler 186 is the NASA equivalent of Showa SFF-TAC Air forks? The perfect planet and the perfect air fork are out there somewhere, but they are at least 17,000 years away. The sad thing is that I can’t drive across Los Angeles in the amount of time it takes to fly across the USA in the Concorde, but the Concorde wasn’t allowed to fly across the United States. So much for scientific advancement.

           Today we have  bikes with Triple Air Chamber forks, but very little technical support on how to make them work. Worse yet, a set of 2006 Yamaha SSS forks, with antiquated coil springs, are twice as good as Showa TAC forks. My bike also has a programmable ECU to insure that I’ll never have to squint at a brass jet again. But, in the place of brass, I need a computer, $400 worth of software, an accessory pigtail and the base knowledge of how to change the percentages in 94 cells.

           Thankfully for my maladroit mechanic skills, the 2015 Honda CRF450 has air forks that only require 35psi, as opposed to the 170 psi of the Triple Chamber variety. Thanks goodness for small blessings, but of course they added both high- and low-speed clickers to each fork cap. Cool enough, except that one of the clickers is virtually inaccessible unless I take the handlebars off (shades of the Hubble telescope).

           I don’t want to go to Kepler 186 nor do I want to race a motorcycle so complex that it could get me there. I appreciate it when a manufacturer transfers works bike technology over from the race team to the production bikes, but I would be more appreciative if they sent the team personnel with it to keep it up to snuff. Take Honda’s infamous four-spring clutch. It came right off the Honda works bikes—where it worked flawless. Why did it work so well, because a Team Honda mechanic changed the clutch plates after every moto (and Honda used special titanium clutch springs). In my hands the four-spring CRF450 clutch was confetti. I shredded it in one moto and then went looking for a factory mechanic to make it better again. He was nowhere to be found at my local track. For four long years Honda CRF450 owners suffered with an inadequate clutch. Heck, over those four years, I could have been 1/10,000th on the way to Kepler 186.

             I’m not a product manager at one of the Big Six. I’m just a guy who races his motorcycle every weekend. I need the best bike I can get, but I also need the best bike that I can live with. Coil spring don’t go flat. Brass jets don’t get computer bugs. Works parts rarely work without a works mechanic.

               If I was a product manager I’d start looking at the men who race motorcycles, in this country, at this juncture on the time-space continuum—not try to emulate NASA.