You can say we're broke, or that the private sector is on their own now, etc. But we waste trillions, we have a very sluggish economy, and we have a political system that will not get entitlement spending under control. These impediments do not have to be; they are imposed on us by a massively failed government. So the money for a continued robust space program in cooperation between NASA and the private sector COULD still be there with the right pieces in place. This is a real situation, but it's also a metaphor for our nation, ie, "limited growth".
This is not America.
ping
I thought Obama told them they had a direction—peace initiatives to the mohammedans.
Beijing calling...
Ping.
They want a new direction?
How about...”UP”?
Not that I’m a big fan of NASA, but, what the heck happened? We were going to have a moon colony. We were going to have underwater communities. We had a nation filled with people with fire in their bellies. Now, the Democrats want us all to sit around and contemplate our navels while they loot the public treasury. The Democrats are worse than you think. They’re not addle-brained zealots. They’re a bunch of thieves.
“This is not America.”
Blessing and curse, I’m old enough to remember the America that was. As a kid growing up in Canoga Park, we sat out on the backyard patio and saw the orange glow and heard the rumble from the Rocketdyne engine test facility in the nearby Santa Susana mountains.
On some nights, we could clearly see satellites (ours or theirs?) streaking across the sky. And Alan Shepard was the man of the hour, every kid I knew wanted to be an astronaut. Except me, I wanted to be a nuclear physicist.
Those were heady times. We were all proud to be Americans, first in space exploration, first on the moon, first in innovation and invention. And the economy boomed.
And now we live in time where radical government greenies want to stamp out all traces of man and his marvelous progress, and return the planet to some imaginary primitive past. A utopia where we all live in huts with dirt floors, subsist on strict vegan diets, and sing Woodie Guthrie songs while holding hands around a picture of a campfire.
Oh, to be eight years old again during that moment of time in San Fernando Valley.
Without the space program, I assume that all those funds for black projects will need to be buried in other programs or cut all together. Are we also closing secret bases for development of new technology as well? I assume Obama will stifle many programs in the works that are never going to see the light of day, and the space program is just the publicly visible tip of the iceberg.
By all objective criteria, America’s better days are behind her, and the public no longer has the pioneer spirit and sense of individual responsibility that would bring it back.
I wonder when the nation will fracture into smaller nation states, based on regional preferences.
More importantly, from what part of the world will the spirit of freedom be shining for the rest of the world to see when they are finally sick of the culture of dependency and despondency in which they now wallow?
I see no lamp of liberty lit in any part of the world, and it is fast being extinguished here. This is one of those times which, in years to come, will be labeled as a new “dark age” in which hedonism and secular bureaucracy stifled the human spirit in a spasm of collective group think. NO advancements will occur in medicine, in art, in literature, in mechanics, in chemistry, in physics, in aeronautics, in food production, in transportation, or in energy production.
We will be content to haul stones for a new pyramid to fool us into thinking we matter.
When I lived in the Soviet Union, there was an emphasis on the super-large edifices to show how great and advanced was the culture. In Moscow they built seven large buildings that all looked the same (after all, there was not need for creativity one the plan for a “great” edifice was drafted) to show the greatness of the collective.
The further Soviet society rotted from within, the larger became the exoskeleton of the stink bug that was the true structure of the Soviet society.
We are heading in the same direction, rotting from within while trying to create the impression that the shell of our is full of the promise of a new chicken ready to hatch.
Why else would we parade the shuttle over New York at the time when it is being placed forever on the junk heap of history. Hell, we won’t even adequately fund the museum in a year or two.
Reform must start with Washington, and those who go along in the corrupt system to gain power and prestige should be the first to go. But it will not happen, as the people are not aware of the situation and still think that they are on solid ground.
Heaven help us all.