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Posted on 01/28/2010 5:39:11 PM PST by Kaslin
Achievement: The nation that put the first man on the moon may have put its last as budget cuts slash NASA's plans to return. Men will return to the moon, but they will likely speak Chinese.
On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy announced in front of a joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American to the moon by the end of that decade. It was a clarion call to the American spirit and technology to rise up and prove that America's best days were still ahead.
Forty-one years after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969, rather than continuing on to Mars and beyond, we will soon be hitching rides on Russian spacecraft to fix toilets and conduct science-fair-level experiments on the International Space Station. Our aging space shuttle fleet is about to be retired, and no money is around to replace it.
According to a report in the Orlando Sentinel, when the White House releases its official budget proposal on Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return Americans to the moon by 2020. The American-manned space program that galvanized a nation and made manned space flight a reality will be officially dead.
An administration that complains about the outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing capacity to foreign countries has decided to outsource manned space flight. NASA will buy rides for its astronauts, no longer pioneers but rather space tourists, from the Russians at $51 million a seat on their Soyuz space vehicles. Last May, NASA announced a new contract with the Russians allowing it to buy six seats on Soyuz craft in 2012 and 2013 at a cost of $306 million.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Another sign of our nation’s decline under the BO administration.
Obama really is as vile a loathsome gutter-crawler as we knew he was 18 months ago.
The reports of the death of the American manned space program are greatly over exaggerated. The emphasis will just shift to the private sector. That’s all.
Well he’s trying to destroy this great country
My thought for years.
“The reports of the death of the American manned space program are greatly over exaggerated. The emphasis will just shift to the private sector. That’s all.”
Why would they start now?
Just close down NASA and sell all its assets to private enterprise.
Then 0bama would nationalize that private enterprise.
You really think Obama will let those greedy space barrons get away with going to space?
I’m all for private enterprise getting into the manned spaceflight business. However, do you really think they can send a manned mission to the moon anytime soon - as in the next 20 years? And a mission to Mars? Ever? Or at least in our lifetime?
SpaceX will get there before the Chinese IMHO.
I can remember about two years ago when Obama visited Titisville Florida and promised the union workers at Kennedy Space Center that he supported the Ares project.
From Barack Obama’s Plan For American Leadership in Space:
As president, Obama will support the development of this vital new platform to ensure that the United States’ reliance on foreign space capabilities is limited to the minimum possible time period. The CEV will be the backbone of future missions, and is being designed with technology that is already proven and available.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=26647
No. Possibly they can get to some asteroids though.
I have mixed feelings about this aspect of the proposed budget cuts, and probably don’t really have anough detailed knowledge to take a position. But it seems to me that space travel is far enough along that it might actually be beneficial for the private sector to take over. Continuing to have the bulk of space travel/exploration done on the government teat invariably tends to increase the socialist mentality of the people doing the work, and socialist influence on the specific choices of what gets done and how and at what cost. By turning this over to the private sector, we may actually end up getting ahead of countries like Russia and China, where government is controlling every aspect of their space programs.
Israel seems to be doing fine with the private sector leading the charge in the space technology sector: “SpaceX and Spacecom Sign Contract for Falcon 9 Geosynchronous Transfer Mission” http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2439718/posts
This event has been on the horizon for many years, as our country's budget is dedicated more and more to entitlement and other socialist programs, and paying interest on debt. Socialists and Marxists understand not science and technology, and the relationship between technological innovation and standard of living.
What great space related R&D programs and accomplishments are associated with countries like Venezuela, Cuba, the UN and other third world nations? The Democrats would rather have degraded health care like those nations, and continue to punish and discourage the successful.
What has the government run space program done in the 40 years since apollo? Sent a telescope into orbit, sent a lego toy to Mars. They have languished and stalled. NASA is a dead end. They are more concerned with global warming than going to Mars. Even John Glenn thinks the private sector can get to Mars quicker than the government. Let the private sector take over. A few government grants to them will be far more productive than the bloated bureaucracy that is NASA.
Another sign of our nation’s deliberate decline under the BO administration.
Fixed.
“SpaceX will get there before the Chinese IMHO.”
HAhABAHAHWAAAA
Not after SpaceX and others get nationalized - for the greater good, you know.
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