A day for mourning
LEFT: The insignia of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Project- which most assuredly has not been canceled.
Imagine opening a history book a hundred years hence, and reading the following:
But alas, it will not be. Instead, history will record February 1, 2010 as the day when the United States- the nation that was first to the moon- became a second-class nation in space.
Today President Obama cancelled the Constellation program to both replace the space shuttle and provide a vehicle and booster capable of taking us back to the moon and ultimately to Mars. The American manned space flight program will be privatized- which is just another way of saying that it will be virtually phased out.
Bob Waters did a piece on the fiftieth anniversary of Sputnik I on the trauma we as a nation experienced first by being beaten into orbit by Sputnik, and then by being beaten in the race to put the first human being in space when Yuri Gagarin followed it into orbit three and a half years later. Bob had quite a bit to say about the likelihood of that trauma being repeated if the Chinese replaced us as the world's leading space faring power by matching our lunar landing at a time when we would be unprepared to return to the moon ourselves for years to come. Today that likelihood became a virtual certainty.
We, as a nation, will rue this day. And despite the fecklessness of what seems destined to go down in history as a failed presidency, today's decision may well be remembered as Barack Obama's greatest blunder. Some time ten or fifteen years in the future, Americans will look up into the night sky and behold a moon over which a Chinese flag flies, and know that their own nation will be unable for years and perhaps decades to once again plant Old Glory there. And as China increases in economic and military power, we will have far more reason to regret this decision that than we ever had because of the dithering which could easily have enabled us to both orbit a satellite and put a man into space ahead of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, if we had only had the will- and the foresight.
The collapse of the housing bubble brought about an economic disaster known to history as the Great Recession. Unemployment reached double-digits in the following years, and even after the economy technically began growing again that growth lagged at a sluggish pace. Unprecedented "stimulus" spending on infrastructure and other government projects which vastly increased the Federal budget deficit, despite being touted by the Obama Administration as a decisive and necessary anti-recession measure, failed to have anything like the intended impact.
Finally, however, Obama took a page from a predecessor to whom he was often compared, John F. Kennedy, and undertook to repeat a highly successful experiment from the past. Noting the unprecedented job creation which resulted from Kennedy's crash program to put an American on the moon before the decade of the 'Sixties ended, and the exponentially larger amount of money the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs generated than the government spent on them, Obama committed the United States to return to the moon by 2020 and to a manned mission to Mars by 2030.
While replacing the scientific and economic infrastructure created by the first moon program, which had atrophied to the point of disappearing in the intervening years, took time, within a year of the decision it was already having a positive impact on employment in Florida, California, and other areas in which the aerospace industry played a major economic role. And while the already huge deficit was initially increased, over time the economic impact of the second American assault on the moon not only played a major role of lifting the nation out of the shadow of recession, but provided sufficient additional tax income to significantly reduce that deficit.
But alas, it will not be. Instead, history will record February 1, 2010 as the day when the United States- the nation that was first to the moon- became a second-class nation in space.
Today President Obama cancelled the Constellation program to both replace the space shuttle and provide a vehicle and booster capable of taking us back to the moon and ultimately to Mars. The American manned space flight program will be privatized- which is just another way of saying that it will be virtually phased out.
Bob Waters did a piece on the fiftieth anniversary of Sputnik I on the trauma we as a nation experienced first by being beaten into orbit by Sputnik, and then by being beaten in the race to put the first human being in space when Yuri Gagarin followed it into orbit three and a half years later. Bob had quite a bit to say about the likelihood of that trauma being repeated if the Chinese replaced us as the world's leading space faring power by matching our lunar landing at a time when we would be unprepared to return to the moon ourselves for years to come. Today that likelihood became a virtual certainty.
We, as a nation, will rue this day. And despite the fecklessness of what seems destined to go down in history as a failed presidency, today's decision may well be remembered as Barack Obama's greatest blunder. Some time ten or fifteen years in the future, Americans will look up into the night sky and behold a moon over which a Chinese flag flies, and know that their own nation will be unable for years and perhaps decades to once again plant Old Glory there. And as China increases in economic and military power, we will have far more reason to regret this decision that than we ever had because of the dithering which could easily have enabled us to both orbit a satellite and put a man into space ahead of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, if we had only had the will- and the foresight.
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