Posted on 02/09/2010 7:15:40 AM PST by outpostinmass2
While discussing his spending priorities, President Obama used an image we can all understand: the shrinking family budget. We have less money to spend, he explained, at home and on Capitol Hill. So good on him for ditching the manned (shouldn’t that be “personned’’?) space program. It is the unneeded and extravagant lawn service of the federal government. I grew up with the fairy tale of the space program: brave men with crewcuts, such as the tragically (and pointlessly) martyred Gus Grissom, launching themselves into space, um . . . because it was there? Because the Russians had done so first? Because Life magazine and the nascent, already powerful medium of television marshaled huge audiences for the flights?
If space flight had a reason to exist, that reason ended, dramatically, on July 20, 1969. Mission accomplished, as my old pal George W. Bush memorably stated. Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon represented the apogee of American civilization, and the fulfillment of an ambitious technological and economic commitment undertaken by President Kennedy. We should have quit while we were ahead.
But we didn’t. Late-20th-century America was a land of plenty, so we financed silly, follow-on moon missions, the Lost-in-Space charade of Skylab, the absurd, US-Russian Apollo-Soyuz, the ill-fated shuttle missions, and the International Space Station. Nothing has been quite so cynical as NASA’s propaganda war to preserve the thousands of jobs at its taxpayer-funded outposts in Alabama, Florida, Texas, and California. In 1986 a New Hampshire school teacher perished in an elaborate and pointless NASA publicity stunt, sending an “ordinary’’ American on the space shuttle. Her six crewmates died, too, and 17 years later seven other astronauts died when the Columbia disintegrated on reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
WHAT?! No more fake moon landings? OUTRAGE!
Russia and China will continue their space programs. As their capability advances and the US lags, there will come a day when they are capable of inserting dominant space based weapons in orbit. Treaties will mean nothing at that point since the US will be incapable of enforcing them. The US will then face the abhorrent reality that Eisenhower predicted. Americans will look up to the light of a Russian (or Chinese) moon.
Funny thing is that liberals feel the say way about the military as the mental deficients feel about the space program.
Governments are the traditional pathfinders to profit. Columbus, Magellan, Balboa, Lewis and clark. All were funded by governments and all opened the trail for private profit.
“You’re one of those guys that’s so far right ...”
Right!
Thank you!
Hank
No more fake moon landings? HA! No more fake moon!
No mention of John Glen's publicity stunt (old man rides in the shuttle in exchange for his vote against impeachment).
Yep. There is a fifth column in this country and government that oppose any future military weapons development from the US. Barack is mothballing it as quickly as he can and has been upfront about doing so.
Satellite pictures on your desktop, cellphones, GPS, satellite tv, etc.
Nope. Nada. Nothing.
Well, since Clinton sold the ChiComs missile technology, at least we know where we can turn to replace our satellites if they are willing to do so and don't hamper our communications the way they do Google.
Other than that, what did NASA ever do for us?
TANG and velcro.
Didn’t the Camelot King start the space race?
Every now and then a liberal’s true colors come out. It isn’t pretty....
While the author was a tad harsh in his critique, he made a lot of excellent points. On the other hand, you merely called him a name and mischaracterized his essay.
Perhaps, yes, we are hard-wired to hike to the top of the hill to peer into the next valley, or sail on the ocean until land recedes from the horizon. But that doesn’t mean we have to spend billions of dollars a year groping in the cosmos so that thousands of bureaucrats can keep their jobs. Bumbling in space costs money this family doesn’t have.
Our government needs to understand that there is no glorious future in space because they already spent it generations ago. As long as the welfare recipient is clogging the line in Wal-Mart, wasting my precious life because she did not select the precisely correct kind of generic condensed orange juice or the 2% milk instead of the approved whole milk, I refuse to think grandiose thoughts about sending some slick {retracted for profanity} astronaut to Mars.
And another thing, if the moon were made of purest refined plutonioum (much less cheese), it would still not be profitable with current technology to go fetch it. If we survive the Great Socialist Economic Implosion, then NASA resources should be spent on finding the cheapest way possible out of the gravity well and making it cheaper. We need a Northwest Passage or a Panama Canal at least, into space.
My bad, could have sworn I said ISS - AkA money pit.
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