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The Sky is Closed

The Administration just announced that the USA is scrapping any further moon missions, and downsizing NASA. The loss of personnel and expertise evoked protests from Astronauts from Neil Armstrong (first man on the moon) to Gene Cernan (last man on the moon, back during the Space Age.)

 Charlie Duke, Alan Bean, and 19 other astronauts joined the protest in a second scathing letter.

“We strongly urge you to drop this misguided proposal that forces NASA out of human space operations for the foreseeable future,” they wrote. “For those of us who have accepted the risk and dedicated a portion of our lives to the exploration of outer space, this is a terrible decision.”
 

There were, on the upside, some promises of missions to asteroids, and a vaguer hope of a manned mission to Mars at some point under some future administration, but the upshot was that the Constellation program (introduced by Pres. George W. Bush in 2004 with the goal of rocketing Americans back to the moon by 2020) is scrapped, ten years before deadline, after $10 billion dollars have been spent. Instead NASA will concentrate on robot missions, and low-earth orbital missions, such as space station vacations for millionaires.

“For the United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low-Earth orbit and with no human exploration capacity to beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature,” wrote Armstrong and friends. “While the president envisages humans traveling away from Earth and perhaps toward Mars at some time in the future, the lack of developed rockets and spacecraft will assure that ability will not be available for many years. Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity.”
 

The Chinese will be the kings of outer space. The West is basically no longer in the frontier business.

Instead the tax dollars of you and all your children and grandchildren will be spent on programs to sovietize the banking system, the housing and loan market, the motor car industry, and the health care industry, with the eventual and inevitable result that all these services will be run as efficiently and effectively as the Department of Motor Vehicles, except that hereafter the lard-face clerk will have power over your bank account, credit circulation, motor car, hospital stays and doctor’s visits, and if you are the wrong race, gender, or sexual orientation, your place in queue will get bumped. The dependents on government largesse will be a permanent voting bloc, and keep the system as a perment and ever-expanding feature of the economy: the public sector will eat the private sector.

That is the future we bought with your tax dollars, a claustrophobic & soviet future, instead of a future of space travel, an infinite future. We sold our patrimony for a mess of pottage.

About

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.

April 16, 2010 @ 12:17 pm
Musings