Exploration has always been done, recall Lewis & Clark? It falls squarely under national defense. NASA was only created as a civilian agency to avoid the overt identification of space exploration as having a military purpose during the cold war.
We have maintained the capability of getting to space for nearly sixty years for the same reason we maintain a navy and air force. We keep exploring space so that we are neither unaware of what is out there and so that we don’t lose that capability while another nation develops it.
Constitutionally, the functions of NASA belong in the Defense Department. Pulling it out was just a head fake with regards to the Soviets and it kept the hippies from sabotaging it politically.
Now the inevitable commercialization of space is beginning to happen. As that proceeds, a military presence will be necessary in the same way it is necessary on the high seas to protect shipping. Bringing back moon rocks and leaving footprints are just things that happened as a result of military needs.
We have weather, communication, gps, and remote sensing satellites as well that comprise critical infrastructure that also need to be protected the same as any other infrastructure. Waiting until there is an immediate threat to develop or create the means to defend this infrastructure will be too late.
” NASA was only created as a civilian agency to avoid the overt identification of space exploration as having a military purpose during the cold war.”
My father worked at the NACA during WWll. It became NASA.
I loved JFK's 1961 speech, "We choose to go to the Moon."
... "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win" ...
I still get chills reading it and feeling a sense of patriotism and pride.
So, I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge your excellent commentary. And give you kudos for triggering that memory and adding substance to the discussion.
You should plead the 5th on that issue since the Constitution says nothing about space exploration.
Otherwise, there is an aspect of fraud with repect to how the corrupt feds have sold NASA to taxpayers. That needs to be addressed imo.
After all, the Founding States gave the “power of the purse” to the House (1.7.1), ordinary voters having constitutional authority to elect representatives from the time that the Constitution was ratified.
NASA minimally has to go under the electron microscope with respect to NASA possibly paying $600 for things like a toilet seat that military contractors, for example, are alleged to have charged the feds; no accountability.
NASA has also been helping to unconstitutionally expand the federal government’s constitutionally limited powers as evidenced by its involvement in climate change politics, the feds having no constitutional authority to regulate, tax and spend for such an issue.
On the other hand, if NASA’s functions have a constitutionally justifiable place in the federal government, I’m sure that Trump will find it, even if the Constitution needs to be amended.
*** “Exploration has always been done, recall Lewis & Clark? It falls squarely under national defense. NASA was only created as a civilian agency to avoid the overt identification of space exploration as having a military purpose during the cold war.
We have maintained the capability of getting to space for nearly sixty years for the same reason we maintain a navy and air force. We keep exploring space so that we are neither unaware of what is out there and so that we don’t lose that capability while another nation develops it.
Constitutionally, the functions of NASA belong in the Defense Department. Pulling it out was just a head fake with regards to the Soviets and it kept the hippies from sabotaging it politically.
Now the inevitable commercialization of space is beginning to happen. As that proceeds, a military presence will be necessary in the same way it is necessary on the high seas to protect shipping. Bringing back moon rocks and leaving footprints are just things that happened as a result of military needs.
We have weather, communication, gps, and remote sensing satellites as well that comprise critical infrastructure that also need to be protected the same as any other infrastructure. Waiting until there is an immediate threat to develop or create the means to defend this infrastructure will be too late” ***
Which is exactly why America Hating Obama has done what he has
Obama is Stupid but those that run him are not