[chimera]

50 years ago this past February, America truly became a space-faring nation when John Glenn orbited the Earth. Today, we don't have this capability, and have no immediate prospects for regaining it. All we can do is send taxpayer dollars over to Putin to hitch rides on Russian rockets. Pretty sad when the once-premier space-faring country cannot do today what it could do a half-century ago. Our military depends heavily on satellites for communications, reconnaissance, positioning, etc. Those who hate us can destroy those assets fairly readily. We have no capability of defending them. For the loss of military capability alone, the decline of the space program in this country is a crime and a threat to national security.

[DoughtyOne]

You’re dead on target there.

We should already be on the moon, very close to going to Mars, and elsewhere.

Space is the new high ground.

Whoever controls it, controls a whole lot more than that.

I do think NASA should have been managed better. I’m not happy with the paths we took, and the malaise that crept in.

We should have a robust space program. We should have a massive atomic collider. We should be doing the work of discovering for the next generation of high tech.

These are strategic matters. They are military related, and will have many private sector spin-offs.

We should gut welfare. We should cut it in half in three years, and eliminate it entirely within seven.

We then pay down the debt and utilize savings and new income to do exploration that keeps us strong.