Losing the Space Race
When I first saw this report that President Obama asked NASA to work on outreach to Muslim countries, I thought I had somehow blundered onto the website for The Onion. (Come to think of it, that’s been happening a fair amount over the last year or so.)
The Obama budget proposes to end funding for the Constellation Project, which aims to return American astronauts to the moon by 2020. The stated reason is that the project is behind schedule and over budget. (Former Apollo astronaut Walt Cunningham disputes that characterization, saying the program’s problems are the result of its being perennially underfunded.) Since the Space Shuttle is slated to stop flying next year, the Obama decision -- unless Congress reverses it -- means the United States will essentially be out of the manned space flight business. Oh, we’ll continue to recruit and train astronauts, but they will only be able to fly if they can hitch a ride aboard Russian or European (and, eventually, Chinese and Indian) spacecraft. How we would train astronauts to operate such differing systems (let alone resolve language issues) can be left to the imagination. In short, Americans in space will become a rarity after next year. Dreaming of becoming an astronaut, one of American childhood’s most common aspirations since the 1960’s, will increasingly be seen not as fanciful, but as fantastical.
And that’s wrong.
I know, I know. The Space Shuttle never fulfilled its expectations, the International Space Station is a boondoggle, libertarians say private launching companies can do the job better and cheaper than a government bureaucracy, etc., etc., etc.
Sorry, I’m not buying any of it. The ability to launch men and women into the hostile environment of outer space and return them safely to the earth is important evidence of a nation’s sense of its own prestige and technical self-confidence. (Not to mention military prowess.) That is why China is now launching men into orbit, and India soon will be. Even when the Russian economy appeared on the verge of collapse in the mid-1990s, the Kremlin seems never for a moment to have seriously considered shuttering its space program. In addition to the prestige factor any nation that can launch men into orbit is a nation to be reckoned with; they knew that such a capability, once surrendered, is one not easily or cheaply resurrected.
And quite frankly, I think that’s why Barack Obama wants the U.S. out of space.
The U.S. manned space program has always been propelled by a hefty dose of American patriotism. A visit to the Johnson Space Center in Houston underlines this fact. The place is festooned with American flags. A photo that is displayed in many places around the complex shows the mission control team deliriously waving American flags at the moment Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface. Also, on the roof of the building that houses mission control sits a flagpole. The flag is raised only when an American is in space.
Offhand, it’s hard to think of a government program less calculated to stir the blood of Barack Obama. (OK, maybe the Pentagon.) He has never, to the best of my knowledge, shared where he was or what he felt at the moment of the moon landing in 1969. If he was back living with his crypto-Communist grandparents in Hawaii by then, it’s safe to say he wasn’t hearing much that was positive about it.
So what does NASA do now? Worry about global warming and “reach out” to the Muslim world. (Whatever that means.) A cynic might say that Barack Obama was trying to humiliate an agency that for five decades has stood for American pride and technical leadership.
But he wouldn’t do that.
Would he?