NO, SON, YOU CAN'T BE AN ASTRONAUT

boblonsberry.com ^ | 07/08/11 | Bob Lonsberry

[shortstop]

My little boy wants to be an astronaut.

Or a beekeeper.

He wants to go to space, but he likes honey, so, in the summer between kindergarten and the first-grade, he’s facing a dilemma.

Realistically, of course, he will never be an astronaut.

He wasn’t born in Russia or China.

And for the foreseeable future, that’s where all the spacefarers will come from. As of today, America is out of the space business.

We don’t make the Right Stuff anymore.

I was born in 1959, and America landed on the moon for my 10th birthday. For all of my life, Americans have kicked the tires and lit the fires and roared into space. The wild blue yonder was ours, and the long tradition of human exploration was ours to uphold.

That ends today as the shuttle lifts off under its own power one last time. After 30 years of same-o same-o low-earth orbit, it’s time to park it in the barn. Our sights, which were once set on the stars, now do not leave the tarmac.

America is grounded.

Oh, sure, there’s the International Space Station, an essentially pointless plumbing problem circling the planet somewhere in the out-of-here sphere. It’s the kiddie ride of space travel, and if we want to get there from now on, we’ll have to go as cargo on a Russian bottle rocket.

JFK must be proud.

In a generation, we have gone from defining the science, from being a leap or two ahead of the cutting edge, to being also rans. We have surrendered glory like no one in history. We have begged for second-class status and it is ours.

So, no, son, you can’t be an astronaut.

And, no, son, you can’t go to Florida and watch a rocket launch.

Rather, someday, as you are in the prime of your life, the last American astronaut – like the veteran of a long-forgotten war – will die.

And with him he will take that spark of wanderlust that populated the islands of the oceans and brought Columbus to the New World.

Once we studied Prince Henry the Navigator and Hudson and Drake, and others who saw the horizon and sailed for it. We held up and honored those who filled in the empty spaces on the map. We once believed it noble to “boldly go where no man had gone before.”

But that ethic has grown cold in this country. Bureaucracy and sloth killed it. First it was the ossification of NASA into the dead weight of a government workforce, then it was the social lust for entitlement over adventure. We cared less about advancing the race and more about lining our pockets. Government cheese became more important to us than national glory.

And by the time the shuttle gets 100 miles down range, the fire will be out.

So, no, son, you can’t be an astronaut.

And, no, America, you can’t claim the skies.

Wilbur and Orville clawed man free of gravity’s hold, and Barack Obama has dropped the baton.

Because ultimately it is political will that drives exploration. Ferdinand and Isabella were not interested in specimens of flora and fauna, Jefferson wanted Lewis and Clark to nail down a true claim to the Louisiana Purchase, John Kennedy wanted to stick it to the Soviets.

And Barack Obama wants to stay at home.

He is not alone in that. He is merely reflecting and empowering a constituency. In the days of Apollo the argument was that space drained important money away from the War on Poverty. Today each launch is counted as a drain on money that would otherwise go to non-profits or public assistance.

For some, the desire to know, to go and do, has grown cold and dead. And they, these days, are making the rules.

And so what is perhaps the greatest technological achievement of history is mothballed and forgotten, days of glory folded into boxes stowed away in attics. The generation that remembers will pass away and the generation that doesn’t care will rise.

We will find adventure in a videogame, and leave space to the Chinese and the Russians.

Who will go where we won’t, and do what we won’t, while we corpulently rot from within.

It’s like “Star Trek” meets “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

And, no, son, you can’t be an astronaut.

[shortstop]

I can't believe we're shutting down our wonderful Muslim Outreach Program called NASA./s I'm sure it's much better to funnel our money into illegal aliens, lazyazz people who won't work and those inner city baby machines pumping out future Democrat voters. This isn't America anymore.

[cripplecreek]

Nobody talks about it but the international outer space treaty is the real hurdle. Space has the same status as Antarctica.

The Outer Space Treaty represents the basic legal framework of international space law. Among its principles, it bars States Parties to the Treaty from placing nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in orbit of Earth, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or to otherwise station them in outer space. It exclusively limits the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes and expressly prohibits their use for testing weapons of any kind, conducting military maneuvers, or establishing military bases, installations, and fortifications (Art.IV). However, the Treaty does not prohibit the placement of conventional weapons in orbit. The treaty also states that the exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries and shall be free for exploration and use by all States.

The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, since they are the Common heritage of mankind. Art. II of the Treaty states that "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". However, the State that launches a space object retains jurisdiction and control over that object. The State is also liable for damages caused by their space object and must avoid contaminating space and celestial bodies.

What's the point in exploration if everything you find is globally owned? There's no incentive for private industry to strive to be anything more than taxi driver, freight hauler, or innkeeper in space.

[DManA]

Blame science for the demise of the space program. In 50 years since we’ve gone outside the atmosphere they have found nothing, within our reach, that is worth going out there for.

[Cincinatus]

That treaty is no hurdle -- treaties are ignored and/or discarded every day. The OST prohibits national claims to extraterrestrial property, not individual ones. Besides, if money-making private activity were to occur on the Moon or an asteroid, who would stop you?

[GonzoGOP]

Well if being an astronaut means flying on a government designed, government built, government owned and government operated spacecraft then yes the US is out of the space race. Of course if you can pay the freight there are some guys who are willing to fly you. And I'm willing to put real money that the Dragon will be flying crews before any ship designed and built by the the National Muslim Outreach Agency does.

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[hopespringseternal]

It really does come down to exploration or feeding people who refuse to work

There is a lot of political payoff in handing out goodies to ne'er-do-wells.

[massgopguy]

I remember watching every launch from Project Mercury to the last Shuttle. The Jupiter 2 was supposed to take off for Alpha Centauri in 1998. I thought is was possible when we landed on the moon that the technology would be there. I guess we can watch the Chinese land on Mars with the next wave of technology on our iPads.

[cripplecreek]

We can’t even drive a drill bit into the ground on earth and America abides by UN treaties no matter how badly they hurt us.

[Forgotten Amendments]

Another “conservative” calls the government “we”.

We can go to space any time. We shouldn’t have bureacrats doing it.

[ScottinVA]

We don’t make the Right Stuff anymore.

Instead, we grow lawyers. That's our contribution now.

[Cincinatus]

We can’t even drive a drill bit into the ground on earth

That has nothing to do with the existence of a treaty -- that's simply because of the leftist policies of the current regime.

And as for the US abiding by UN treaties no matter what -- not down here in Texas, we don't! :^D

[Wolfie]

Same ol’ same ol’: Cut something, but not my thing.

[mad_as_he$$]

NASA is broken beyond belief. They make other dysfunctional fed agencies look like the paradigm of efficient operation.

BTW Bob the private sector will step in and your kid can go to space if he wants.

[stuartcr]

NASA = Muslim outreach program???

[cripplecreek]

It’s time to rethink international space law

The res communis doctrine resounds most prominently when dealing with property ownership rights in outer space. The Outer Space Treaty not only forbids claiming of territory by nations, but its child, the Moon Treaty, attempts to extend that prohibition to private legal entities also. Although the United States is not a signatory to the Moon Treaty, it has not taken open actions to actually refute its legal viability. The result is that the Moon Treaty and its res communis doctrine has slowly crept into the realm of accepted international law.

"What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?"

-James Monroe

[cripplecreek]

[GonzoGOP]

I guess we can watch the Chinese land on Mars with the next wave of technology on our iPads.

China has made three manned space flights and hasn't flown since 2008. They have yet to do rendezvous and docking, something that we did during the Gemini era. You aren't going to the moon much less mars without rendezvous and docking.

They also need a new booster. The Long March rocket is maxed out with the Shenzhou spacecraft. So they are in essence in the same place we are. They aren't going to the moon with anything they can put on a launchpad today. And they take almost as long as NASA to develop a new booster. To be blunt the Chinese space program is still 40 years behind us, although it is making progress while we are standing still, and as such will catch up.

The wild card is commercial space. The Falcon/Dragon-9 could fly crew within a very short period of time. The Falcon-9 Heavy cold easily throw enough mass for a moon shot. And the Mars Society put out a paper showing that given six launches the Falcon-9 Heavy could put enough mass on orbit for a bare bones Mars shot using Bigelow Aerospace inflateable habitation modules. And even the Chinese admit that can't come close to SpaceX in terms of cost per kilo to orbit (reference WHY THE US CAN BEAT CHINA: THE FACTS ABOUT SPACEX COSTS).

The US is in a bad place so far as space exploration is concerned. But the Russians are just as broke and the Chinese are way behind. And if their economy craters (as it appears likely to) they won't be doing a Moon in a decade stunt the way we did back in the 60s.

[Westbrook]

Did the U.S. Senate actually ratify that “Space Treaty”?

God help us!

[2001convSVT]

Government cheese became more important to us than national glory.

Right you are, the professional politician knows that government handouts, BUY VOTES (NASA doesn’t). That is why I know we will never be able to balance the Federal budget, pay down the debit or STOP printing money. We are done as a nation, Long Live the Republic of Texas! (until they lean that they can vote themselves money from the public Treasury).