NASA: Not About Space Anymore

Administration officials this week announced that they were going to kill NASA’s manned moon mission, envisioned as an eventual platform for the exploration of Mars, and choose instead to focus on developing commercial space transport and performing maintenance of the International Space Station (ISS).

Clearly, the White House recognizes how important it is that we inspire the next generation of scientists and explorers, to instill in a young child the dream of one day breaking free of the bonds of gravity that hold us tightly to this rocky plane, and soaring off into the outer reaches of low earth orbit to deliver a payload of spare valves and CO2 scrubbers.

Another new focus of the space program will be to stop going into space.  At least under our own power, as the White House plans to proceed with the decommissioning of the space shuttle fleet by the end of this year, leaving the United States without any means of sending astronauts to the ISS, which the US largely built and championed.  But not to worry, we can still get there as long as the Russians let us hitch a ride with them.

As the President said in his State of the Union Address this week, he will “not accept second place for the United States of America.”

Third place, however, remains on the table.

A formal announcement has yet to be made, but we were privy to an excerpt of an early draft of the President’s planned remarks on his decision, which he patterned after one of his role models, John F. Kennedy:

...But why, some say, low earth orbit? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why stroll up a modest hill? Why take a bus uptown? Why does Oregon play Portland State?

We choose to go into low earth orbit. We choose to go into low earth orbit in this decade and do the other things, not because they are hard, but because they are easy, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the most pedestrian of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we’ve already done over and over and over again.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision to shift our efforts in space from leading the way to the moon and Mars, to begging the Russians to take us to our own space station, as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

We have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a ChangZheng 4 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Fengbao 1. We have seen the site where the Long March 7 vehicles are being sent into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center.

So why try to match that?  The growth of our science and education will be much more enriched by our new focus on going round and round in orbit. Next to some Russians.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

Did you catch the part where he died?

And, therefore, we ask God's blessing for the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, and so on, as they set sail for the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

Us?  We’ve got some windows to insulate!

The President’s plan also includes placing greater emphasis on having private companies take a leading role in going into space.

Because as we all know the proper role of government is to make automobiles, run banks, and decide what kind of health care we should have.

Space?  That is clearly more appropriately handled by the free market.

And the Chinese.

J.