Obama’s Asteroid: The decline of NASA and the senseless priorities of our government (P.J. O’Rourke)

Weekly Standard ^ | June 10, 2013 | P.J. O'Rourke

[stevie_d_64]

Yeah, I kinda have a little bias when it comes to NASA stuff...Both my parents worked and retired from there...My sister is a senior manager for a major contractor still doing a few things, and always looking over her shoulder...

I worked there for a few years, and got to know some of the smartest people in the world who shared desks next to mine...

And then again, I met some of the most idiotic people there as well...Amazing how the latter always finds a way to linger longer than most of us...

NASA’s deal is that it gets a lot of attention...It basically has to even during the bad times...

When you look at the budget it gets to spend, it is minute compared to the pork spending some other “un-Constitutional” items get, but it still gets more attention than that other stuff...

NASA’s budget was something that wasn’t going to fit with the plans Obama and the rest of the Fabian Socialists had planned for this country...

So most of that money (now) is special projects, sending Astronauts up to play on the station...Since we basically built the whole thing anyway, there was no way the few people who support the program were to be silenced, because we now have NO manned spaceflight capability right now...

NASA will be back, but as usual it is only a management system, the contractors might be back in due course, but it will be a shell of its former self...

And maybe thats a good thing...

One thing is for sure...It’ll take a president to re-ignite national pride in the exploration of space once again, and I do not see anyone with that kind of fire in politics these days...Much less the fact that there will be a considerable resistance to dole out tax dollars to a defunct agency...The only agency of the government that is seeing their future dim, than expland...

Not like the IRS...

Just my opinion...

[neverdem]

JUN 10, 2013, VOL. 18, NO. 37

I added the ‘e’ for June.

[clearcarbon]

It takes a lifetime to train an NASA engineer, but it only takes a moment to make their career disappear. Unless the country wants to import the next batch from China, it better find a way to keep the current crop employed as well as encourage the next graduating class.

[zot]

Thanks for the ping. I like P.J. O’Rourke, and he presents some important information in this article, but he didn’t go far enough. Although he implied it in the title “Omama’s Asteroid” he should have flat-out said the decline of NASA and the senseless priorities of this administration are intentional.

[hinckley buzzard]

NASA is done, never to return. The disruption of ongoing programs over the years, and the shuttle program cul de sac has destroyed the institutional memory of the agency. All the people who knew how to do anything have retired or died, and they didn't pass on what they knew to a next generation.

If we wanted to send a man to the moon today we'd have to start from scratch like we did in the sixties, but we can't afford that now.

[stevie_d_64]

I had a cube-mate...A Russian engineer...He was a specialist in leak detection methodology...One of the smartest guys I knew...And a good man!!!

His job before coming to America (immigrate) was as a technician responsible for the wiring integration between the targeting computers and the nuclear warheads on Russian ICBM’s (MIRV’s)...

How ironic...