Last week I wrote about the downsizing of NASA and waxed nostalgic for the days when the shuttle missions were events of national consequence. Today Charles Krauthammer details the real long term danger of the United States loosing its preeminence in space.
By the end of this year, there will be no shuttle, no U.S. manned space program, no way for us to get into space. We're not talking about Mars or the moon here. We're talking about low-Earth orbit, which the U.S. has dominated for nearly half a century and from which it is now retiring with nary a whimper.
Our absence from low-Earth orbit was meant to last a few years, the interval between the retirement of the fatally fragile space shuttle and its replacement with the Constellation program (Ares booster, Orion capsule, Altair lunar lander) to take astronauts more cheaply and safely back to space.
But the Obama 2011 budget kills Constellation. Instead, we shall have nothing. For the first time since John Glenn flew in 1962, the U.S. will have no access of its own for humans into space -- and no prospect of getting there in the foreseeable future.
For the foreseeable future we are going to have to rely on the Russians and the Chinese if we need men in space. It seems as though America has given up on the final frontier at the same time it has re-upped for FDR-styled socialism. *sigh*
3 comments:
Obama's priorities stink!
We don't want to pay taxes and we don't want debt. Seems pretty simple. With NASA being a big
player in global warming data, the GOP ultra-cons should be leaping with joy. Will watch Scott Brown's vote....
We lost the first space race to the socialists. Sending a man to the moon after the russians got there first and decided it wasn't worth it does not count.
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