Space-policy column: [1] I have little patience for missions justified mainly by national prestige, especially when their scientific goals duplicate existing work. [2] The proposed lunar orbiter initially looked like another such display. [3] Its designers, however, have made the sensor platform modular and openly licensed, allowing universities to add instruments that will also improve wildfire and drought monitoring on Earth. [4] Those choices do not make prestige irrelevant, but they convert a symbolic project into a potentially useful research commons. How does the columnist's attitude change?