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Space race no longer being run
Published February 21, 2010
For America, it seems, space is no longer the final frontier.
The cosmos, it seems, have been deemed not worth the fuss. It’s not a place of promise, a glimpse of our future among the stars. It’s just a galactic wasteland — empty space.
Later this year, we will retire the space shuttle, the space taxi that has taken our astronauts into orbit and back again countless times. It has served as the lifeline between Earth and, first, the MIR Space Station, and then the still-orbiting International Space Station.
Originally, the National Aeronautic Space Administration had planned a new program — Constellation — to fill the gap. It would have been a return to the rocket-based space program, rather than a shuttle, the first step to finally returning to the moon, and then, perhaps, Mars.
Instead, however, there will be nothing. In the midst of economic turmoil and a looming budget deficit that could probably be stacked all the way to the moon, President Barack Obama has cut funding for NASA. The space program has been crippled. Constellation is no more.
NASA isn’t dead ... yet. We’ll still be sending astronauts to space, with the help of our buddies in Russia. You know, the guys whom we once battled in the Space Race? The ones we beat to the moon? That’s right, they’ll be giving us rides ... for a price.
American space exploration, however, as funded by the government is essentially gone. Obama - or at least his advisors, because I’m not even sure he remembers there is a NASA — says the future of manned space travel lies in private industry, which is funny from the man who owns General Motors. Apparently, free enterprise is best condoned when it’s something you don’t want.
I’ve argued for the importance of the space program before, not only for the scientific advancements it has brought us — much of the technology all around us would not exist without the work of NASA engineers trying to get men to the moon — but for the inspiration it gives. As important as Social Security and Medicare are, people need something to live for other than just living.
Space once represented that — John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier,” which Americans would conquer as they did so much else, which we would make our own in an eternal quest through the stars.
Instead, we have turned our back on outer space, have abandoned it to worry about our own petty concerns on one tiny speck of dust in a backwater part of the galaxy.
Eventually, when the economy improves and new leadership comes through the White House doors, the national space program might come back. But I doubt it. In a world of partisan nonsense, space travel doesn’t get the same votes yelling about gay marriage or terrorism can.
We have sold our birthright for a mess of pottage, and what was once ours for the taking may now be forever out of reach. Now, we will only reach the stars in our dreams, only to wake and find ourselves trapped.
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