“Deciding NASA’s future gave Obama a chance to show visionary leadership. He could have replaced AresI/Ares5 with the simpler cost saving DIRECT/Jupiter rocket. He could have redirected the Moon/Mars effort towards a sustainable human exploratory presence on Mars rather than a lengthly lunar detour. He could have paid for the effort with cuts to the Pentagon’s bloated budget. He could have made a ringing call for international cooperation in a great new human adventure. After years of being disgusted and ashamed of our country, he could have given Americans a reason to feel proud again. Instead, he simply canceled Constellation with only vague references to developing new rocket technology and no plan or timetable for sending humans to Mars. Apparently, there’s now nothing left of American manned spaceflight except the dubious Reagan/Gingerich notion of privatizing it. It’s true that the robotic space program is currently much more scientifically productive than human spaceflight. However, we need to invest now for the long term future. In the long run, humans on Mars and beyond can do a much more through and flexible job of exploring than can any robots we are likely to develop in this century. There are other reasons besides science for manned spaceflight. Cooperative international manned flight provides a highly visible arena in which nations can work together towards a common goal. Binding nations together in a common endeavor is necessary to achieve other goals vital to the survival of global civilization, like stopping global warming and controlling nuclear weapons. The public space program is also one non-military way of investing in the development of new technologies that private investors consider too risky. I’ll grant that, given the unsolved problem of astronaut exposure to galactic cosmic rays, humans to Mars might not be the right visionary goal, just yet. There are lots of other visionary goals to choose from. What about a new generation of space telescopes to characterize Earth-like extrasolar planets, and test their atmospheres for the tell-tale signs of life? NASA’s terrestrial planet finder and life finder space telescopes are nothing more than design studies crying out for funding. How about implementing them with a definite budget and timetable? How about a robotic sample return from Mars within less than eight years (ie. before Obama’s putative second term is up)? Surely America can do *something* besides fight endless pointless wars and cut budgets on everything else.
I voted for Obama with hope and enthusiasm. Unfortunately, he’s repeatedly shown a lack of vision about reviving America. First, he made the abysmally bad choice of escalating Bush’s ruinously expensive war in Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires. On health care reform, he failed to make a strong push for a robust public health care option to control the costs of our corrupt and greedy private health care system. Where is his leadership on the critical issue of global warming? It surely wasn’t in evidence at the failed Copenhagen Climate Conference. Now, he seems to have failed at providing a renewed vision for America’s space program. In the face of crying public needs and a middle class in collapse, Obama has chosen to freeze domestic spending rather than to restore taxation of the wealthiest Americans to pre-Reagan levels. Obama seems to have forgotten that, as a supposed Democrat, he is heir to the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. I hope the Europeans are ready to take over as the leaders among the world’s democracies, because the US is no longer capable of anything except senseless militarism and private greed.
”
