The Stupidity of Obama's Space Platform
In an earlier blog entitled “What Barack Obama Needs to Change”, I addressed his campaign platform concerning our country’s manned space program. Now that he needs the Texas vote, he’s shifted positions slightly by claiming he would not delay the delivery of Orion but delay man’s first mission to Mars. That’s really nothing but a shell game to garner votes. He’s hoping that by delaying something still on the drawing boards, the American public won’t understand what he’s advocating.
His whole approach contradicts the very philosophies he says he stands for. Why, after so many years past the end of Apollo, does he insist on returning to those philosophies of the past? Where is the creative approach that allows the country to have BOTH a vigorous space program and enhanced education for the children of this country? His cry of delay and his insistence on robbing NASA to somehow help the indigent are the same old tired lines of the sixties and seventies that led to years of decay and the lack of focus NASA was later ravaged for after the Columbia accident. It derives more from an attempt to look like a hero, a savior, to voters than truly doing what’s best for the country. It also shows he has no idea of what funding we’re talking about. The Department of Education already outspends NASA by over a factor of three!!! How is crippling the space agency to get them a little bit more going to help anything? (If NASA is ready to go to Mars and that has been its chartered focus, then you can bet that delaying the mission amounts to crippling the agency or, at least, turning its bureaucracy into a quagmire.) My bet is he could find enough waste in the Dept of Education to pay for his new educational programs. If not, since we’re spending $275 million per day (!!!) for the War in Iraq, if he brings the troops home as he’s promised, it would take only a pittance of that to give him the educational program he needs and increase NASA funding beyond what anyone has so far considered? (Only eight days worth of the war’s expenditures would help close the gap between the retirement of shuttle and the delivery and flight of Orion.)
When I look at all this and what it means, it pretty well convinces me Hillary is right about the guy. He does deliver great speeches and an ability to rally the people is no small thing; but in the day-to-day life of the President of the United States, it is knowledge of what you’re talking about as well as what you’re dealing with that makes the difference in the quality of the Presidency. Image is nice, but we’ve already elected too many Presidents based upon only their image, including our latest one.
When it comes to the manned space program, Obama’s idea of change seems to return to past days of layoffs in the aerospace industry I remember well, not because I went through them, but because I was a college student who almost ducked out of being an engineering major because of them. It’s fine to talk about raising the bar of education; but if you drive the brightest of your country out of work, where do the new kids have to go? Education and the space program are complimentary, not adversarial. Even this Administration’s “bean-counters” have been known to see that.