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Obama is taking the moon away By Michael C. Guilmette Jr. Originally published on Feb. 4, 2010, in the Connersville News-Examiner. I predicted it last May, but I really hoped it wouldn’t come true.
On Monday, the White House confirmed the story. Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2011, which amounts to a whopping $3.8 trillion — the highest in U.S. history — includes no funding for the future moon missions President George W. Bush called for in 2003 after the shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry. The program — on which $9 billion has already been spent — would not only return humans to the lunar surface but also serve as a replacement for the aging shuttle fleet due to retire this year. In fact, NASA successfully launched the Ares I-X, the prototype for the rocket designed to ferry astronauts to orbit, on Oct. 28, 2009 — a launch that likely will not be repeated any time in the near future. White House officials were predictably defensive about the cut, couching it in a call for innovation. “This isn’t a step backwards,” said Jim Kohlenberger, chief of staff at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “I think the step backwards was trying to recreate the moon landings of 40 years ago using largely yesterday’s technology, instead of game-changing new technology that can take us further, faster and more affordably into space.” Meanwhile, the administration’s plan for getting Americans back and forth to the International Space Station is to hitch a ride with the Russians using their 1960s-era Soyuz rockets. But this isn’t a step backwards. The funding NASA currently receives for human space flight will be redirected to what the administration calls a dramatic change in rocketry, calling on the space agency to develop new technologies such as in-orbit refueling while keeping an eye toward future manned missions away from Earth. However, the plan does not call for any specific systems, nor sets any timeline for development. While infuriating to space flight supporters, the administration’s move fits in with its approach to energy policy — reject the old while having little idea how to create the new. It is true the Constellation rockets — the Ares I and the heavy-lift Ares V — are based on the Apollo rockets combined with shuttle technology, but those designs have been proven to work and work reliably for decades. What’s more, rocket technology, at its essence, has changed very little in the last 2,000 years. This dramatic change in rocketry the administration calls for is likely as far-fetched as the old Flash Gordon serials. The administration also plans to shift NASA’s focus to concentrate on how so-called climate change is affecting the planet, despite the fact man-made global warming has been shown to be an unmitigated fraud designed to strip freedom and prosperity from humanity. NASA will now be forced to get in line with the administration’s efforts to hoist inadequate, unproven and even unknown technology onto the country based on increasingly specious findings. It’s also ironic the administration is promoting another archaic technology — windmills — for power generation while turning its back on modern rocketry. The loss to science this short-sighted decision represents is immeasurable. We live in a time when searchers have discovered nearly 500 planets outside our solar system, and scientists believe a “second Earth” — a planet capable of supporting life — will be found any day now. However, now that human spaceflight faces an uncertain future, those discoveries would serve little purpose since we could do little more than look at them from a distance. True, interstellar travel may already be a long way off, but chances of it happening are now even less. The only bright spot in Obama’s proposal was $6 billion being funneled to private companies to develop manned rockets capable of reaching orbit. The private sector is a better engine of innovation compared to the government, but what the private sector lacks in the case of space flight is the immense resources needed to accomplish tasks on the scale of what NASA has accomplished many times. Furthermore, it is odd the Obama administration is turning to the private sector in order to advance space flight when Obama has routinely said only government can solve the problems presently facing the nation. This may not seem so strange, however, if we consider the possibility Obama does not care about human space flight — either that, or he doesn’t care about American space flight. Russia, China and India are all considering manned lunar missions in the coming decades, and these rapidly growing economies could easily be tempted to exploit the resources found on the moon for their own purposes, ignoring the international philosophy to space discovery the United States adopted long ago. Also, any nation that journeys to the moon looking to diminish American prestige need only drop the suggestion they found no evidence of an American landing on the moon to cast doubt on our monumental successes. Perhaps the biggest insult of cutting the moon plan is that the cut is being made while Obama is proposing the biggest and most wasteful budget in our entire history. Put end to end, 3.8 trillion dollar bills could stretch from the Earth to the moon many times over, yet those dollars will disappear down the rabbit hole of ever-ballooning entitlement programs. Even the failed stimulus program passed a year ago could easily pay for the moon program, but that is geared toward earthly jobs while unemployment remains at 10 percent. Our future used to be written in the stars, thanks to presidents like John F. Kennedy, but now our future may resemble something more like yesterday, thanks to Obama. • Guilmette is managing editor of the News-Examiner. He may be contacted at mguilmette@newsexaminer.com. |
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Copyright © 2010, Michael C. Guilmette Jr. |
Last Wednesday, just hours prior to President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address (and 400th public speaking event), the Florida Sentinel broke the news that the Constellation program — NASA’s $100 billion effort to return Americans to the moon — was on the budgetary chopping block.
