Abandoning the space race
When archaeologists unearth the relics of the American Century, the space race will be our Holy Grail. Space was our New World. In 1962, when John F. Kennedy declared “we choose to go to the moon,” he encouraged every American to look up to the stars and summon the spirit of Columbus staring across the Atlantic. During the Apollo program every American taxpayer became a deckhand on the voyage to the moon. It was a journey that created the world we now live in, spawning GPS systems, plastics, alloy metals, cordless power tools and cancer detecting CAT scans
Our trip to space also distinguished America from its predecessors. European Empires once drew maps with an eye on colonialism, dividing the world into arbitrary national borders. With a picture taken from the moon, America provided the world with a new map: one planet without boundaries.
This administration’s budget has cancelled the shuttle program—ending human space flight—while also killing the shuttle’s much vaunted replacement: the Constellation Program.
Under the proposal, if Americans wants to go to space in the visible future they will have to catch a ride with the Russians or Chinese.
In a speech scheduled to take place in Florida on April 15, the administration will provide justification for ending fifty years of accumulated wisdom. A generation back this would have been a hard sell. This is the equivalent of hanging a foreclosure sign on a vital piece of the American imagination while depriving future generations of the discoveries that accompany a sustained public investment in science.
The space shuttle would cost $2.4 billion per year to continue flying and development of the Constellation Program would have averaged just over $10 billion each year. To suggest that cancelling the space program is a matter of “fiscal responsibility” is difficult to accept from a government that squandered $787 billion in stimulus funding while pushing a $1 trillion health care overhaul upon a country that doesn’t want it.
It’s about priorities and vision. This is a classic case of a generation not knowing how to manage what it has inherited.
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You are so right. I wonder if we as a country have ever done anything as impressive as our space missions? We’re abandoning space to the Chinese.
to be fair, the space program is entirely inefficient and an absurd use of money if the government really is championing fiscal responsibility. private enterprise will be far more successful and efficient. NASA is a whole pile of suck when it comes to efficient use of resources.
you raise excellent points about the wisdom of the decision. it’s intellectually dishonest to say they’re ending it for fiscal responsibility. the knowledge this world has gained from space programs is extraordinary.
Alas, so true, but I think it will not be a popular position on the board. For to long, the detractors have been saying we only need satellites to perform the astronomical sciences.
Yes, to much imagination has been squandered – on religion. How do you sell experiments and telescopes to a country who a substantial percentage believe the world was created 6000 years ago. How will it go, when life is discovered on other planets (simple life in our own solar system), or life on exo-planets if we discover atmospheres rich in oxygen.
For too many, science is the enemy; all the while separating technology from science (in their mind).