On July 19th we witnessed another dagger in the heart of American Exceptionalism.
On May 25th 1961, John F. Kennedy, an icon of a President said; "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." And that statement jump-started the NASA space program. This challenge to America by its Commander-in-Chief resulted in just such an event on July 20th, 1969 when Commander Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on another world.
On July 19th at 6:28 GMT the last American shuttle undocked from the Harmony Module of the ISS marking the demise of America's manned space program. President Obama and his progressive minions have brought to an end one of the shining achievements of American history.
People have long debated the worth of space exploration; saying that such prodigious funds should be spent helping the destitute; proving that even then, progressives were already framing the claim of need as a virtue. In this argument, we see the true nature of progressive greed.
According to the Office of Management and Budget and the Air Force Almanac, when measured in real terms (adjusted for inflation), the entirety of the NASA budget from 1958 until 2008 amounts to $790 billion. That amount includes
- The amount of money it cost to employ all those engineers, technicians, and program managers.
- The dollars that were spent to develop the technology of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the shuttle, and the International Space Station.
- The dollars spent on all the equipment, launch facilities, and vehicles required to carry out every mission this agency accomplished from its inception in 1958 until today.
To place this into perspective the 2009 federal budget was $3.1 trillion. What's more, the total cost of this agency's accomplishments over 50 years was less than the stimulus package wasted by our current President and his Democrat majorities in 2009. The entirety of the cost of all the NASA programs over a half-century of exploration and achievement amounts to 25% of the dollars spent by the Obama Administration in 2009 alone.
I was a six-year old kid; full of wide-eyed wonder as I sat in my parent's living room in front of a black-and white TV and watched as Alan Shepard Jr., perched above a Redstone rocket, carried out that first 15 minute sub-orbital flight into space. I dreamed of rocket ships, and aliens from other worlds.
I was a fourteen year old teenager on a golf course in Illinois, enjoying a round with my father, when a course worker with a transistor radio drove by in a maintenance cart shouting; "We did it! We did it!" We all knew what Commander Armstrong had done for all of us, and were bursting with American pride.
I was thirty-five years old, and remember asking my supervisor, with tear-filled eyes, if I may have the balance of the day off work after hearing of the Challenger disaster. You see, it was especially devastating to me as it happened on my birthday.
I wept again as President Reagan addressed the nation and tried to comfort us with the words; "It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them."
No reasonable person can argue, with any clarity, that the ROI on the money spent at NASA over the last fifty years has far outstripped any promise made by our current Commander-in-Chief regarding any of his ‘investments' in America's future
I'm feeling frailer than I've ever felt before. I never in all my dreams dreamed that I'd see the end of an era. I never allowed myself to contemplate that the leaders I've known, who've always striven for excellence, would be replaced by leaders who strive to achieve mediocrity; and fail to reach their goal in even that weak attempt.
The current administration says that we will, from now on ask the private sector to pick up the mantle sewn from the cloth cut by Kennedy in his 1961 address. Even as they attempt to slaughter and pick clean that same carcass for entitlement expansion.
President Obama; you should be ashamed of yourself for you have stolen the final frontier from your own children.
Like you, Bill, I always thought the commitment to space exploration was one of this country’s greatest commitments. Both manned and unmanned space missions have increased our knowledge of the universe and represented a belief in our capacity to move forward. There was and is something genuinely ‘progressive’ about space exploration–it’s not a very ‘conservative’ thing to aspire to reach the moon or Mars or to put a probe in orbit around an asteroid or search for life on Mars.
NASA accounted for so little in the federal budget, when compared with almost any other category of expenditure. By the way, thanks to your conservatives for terminating the Webb telescope–which is what I’d expect them to do. And the gains have been so important–technological spinoffs from the kind of basic research that nowadays gets almost no support from any political orientation.
Americans must ride on Russian spacecraft–something I never expected to see. Like you, I see an important part of who and what we are as Americans now coming to an end. And what’s so ironic is that the amount of money saved is virtually unnoticeable, less than the measurement error in the federal budget.
Many years ago Robert Heinlein wrote that there was no guarantee that the language that would be spoken eventually in space would be English. Russian, Chinese, who knows? And Isaac Asimov’s first published sci-fi story was about our government giving up on space because it was too expensive–and a private company took over the mission. I hope we’re that fortunate.
By the way, is there any good reason (yes, I know there are lots of obvious reasons) why some wealthy liberals couldn’t fund the Webb telescope? If Bill Gates can offer millions to the inventor of a better toilet, why can’t he and George Soros get together behind the Webb telescope? No, I’m not holding my breath.
Living in So. Cal. the space program was just taking off. I worked as a secretary to support us while my husband started a ‘business’ in our garage. Eventually he moved into a 10,000 sq. ft. building making transformers that went into all the early space shots. He employed a tremendous number of people over the years, added countless dollars to the economy–a typical American small business success story. We knew people working at JPL, and all the other space facilities doing all sorts of remarkable things. It was a wonderful, exciting, prideful time. I’m grateful we were a part of it. How did it all turn into such a downer?
When you heard the words ‘That’s one small step…’ you heard it through a small transformer that he personally designed and built for the commumication system.
Perhaps it is owing to the fact that I am a few years less than half the age of the author, and the consequent lack of nostalgia for bygone Cold War victories for American national pride, but terminating the space shuttle program is actually one of the only things (actually the only thing I can specifically think of off the top of my head) Obama has done in office that I actually agree with.
Let’s not overly dramatize this event. NASA is not being dismantled. American space exploration is not being terminated. Even manned space flight isn’t ending permanently – development of manned space vehicles to supersede the space shuttle program, which has been ongoing for at least the past 10 years, will continue. But even if all those things were coming to pass, it may be time for some of us to recognize that if a time ever existed when government-monopolized space flight served a vital national interest of the United States, that time may just have passed. I’ve yet to hear a convincing argument why the private sector cannot take up the task of space exploration for both scientific and commercial purposes. I’m afraid the busted dreams of little boys who for 3 generations have grown up with “astronaut” at the top of their “things I want to be when I grow up” list is not a convincing enough argument.
Professor,
You may be a little premature on your pronouncement regarding the James Web Space Telescope. The JWST funding hasn’t been voted in the House as of yet. Also; hope springs eternal that private investment may yet save this project as a grassroots movement to capitalize the JWST is underway.
As for your query about how Mr. Gates & Mr. Soros spend their money; well it is their money, they may spend it as they wish. Allowing persons to use their earned wealth as they see fit is not an issue I back only when their expenditures agree with my philosophy. I don’t like a lot of the things George Soros does with his billions; like funding the Tides Foundation; or the Open Society Institute, as I believe they are organizations that promote one-world government. But it is his money.
Bettyhere,
As with any project with such wide-ranging scope as the exploration of space; initial start up must come from the ‘deep pockets’ of government. However; those projects eventually become influenced by the politics of that same government. Politicians of both political stripes are really no different from the balance of the American public as their primary concern is the continuation of their own employment. NASA became a political football.
We may take some solace in the fact that there are several commercial companies currently engaged in sectors such as launch capability, orbital transportation, and human space flight. It is probably time that the ‘bird left the nest’ so-to-speak; and space exploration takes its place among other commercial ventures that are subject to the rigors of the marketplace. My single concern is that this is occurring during a time when current administration policy is to suborn the private sector to political doctrine. The Gaia worshippers and navel gazers currently resting their hands on the levers of power are so focused inward they may throttle this new borne industry before it gets off the ground.
Patrick,
I can identify with your mindset. “Perhaps it is owing to the fact that I am a few years less than half the age of the author…” You certainly did not remember the genuine fear we had as a nation once it was revealed, in 1957, that the USSR had the capability to reach literally any point on the planet with a nuclear device. By the time I was aware it was a most chilling reality we lived with. You didn’t practice the ‘duck-and-cover’ drills in school as I did. You didn’t know the difference between the tornado alert siren and the nuclear alert siren. We and our neighbors had fallout shelters in the basements of our homes. Hell, our homes had actual basements!
If my timeline calculations are accurate, by the time of your awareness, the Berlin Wall had ceased to exist: The USSR was gone, driven into bankruptcy by another of America’s great Presidents. The Challenger disaster was a fading memory, we were flying three shuttles and commissioning a fourth. Shuttles were being launched with such regularity that you may have believed there had always been orbital space flight; just as I believed, when I was a little shaver, there had always been flight. Your generation grew up with personal computers, CD’s, cell phones, and the internet. All of these technologies grew up with me. One wonders where, exactly, you believe all these creations of our genius began? The relatively minuscule investment we placed into NASA built the world of technological connectivity and convenience we now take for granted.
On another front; we do know there have been several extinction events in the over 4 billion year history of Earth. To neglect to continue to strive to establish a permanent and populous presence in space is to doom our civilization to eventual extinction. I pray that private industry is up to the challenge.
One final thought. “I’m afraid the busted dreams of little boys who for 3 generations have grown up with “astronaut” at the top of their “things I want to be when I grow up” list is not a convincing enough argument.” Surely you entertained a childhood fantasy? As you so aptly pointed out in the beginning of your post, my age precludes me from indulging such things now. Ah; but there was a time….
But for young boys and girls not to dream of starships, nebulae, and ‘The Undiscovered Country’ of the future? Then I say they are the poorer for it
I never said that anyone should force Gates and Soros to use their money to support the JWST–just that it would be nice to see big-time, big-money liberals give some consideration to such things.
Bill,
To dispense with the guesswork, I was born in ’86. I wasn’t quite 3 years old when the Berlin wall fell, and the space shuttle’s maiden voyage was 5 years in the past. So obviously there’s a generational perception gap, which I acknowledged. However, it isn’t as if I am ignorant of history that occurred before I was born. I think maybe being divorced from the living memory and emotional response of the period may actually give me a more objective outlook on the situation (although that could just be generational bias showing through :) ).
I am well aware of the achievements and breakthroughs of technology that NASA has made since its creation (although most of the technologies you mentioned were entirely terrestrial and private-sector innovations), and of the importance that space superiority served strategically during the cold war era. And although philosophically I don’t believe the government should have ever had a monopoly on space exploration, I understand the unique historical circumstances that informed the reasoning behind such deep government involvement in space. But I think the very fact that we are discussing this generational gap is significant in deciding what role the government should play in the future of space travel. It’s been a full generation since the defacto end of the Cold War. The technology required to put men into space is relatively pedestrian. Many nations who have the technological capability to do so don’t because the utility does not outweigh the cost. Our space shuttle missions have increasingly become nothing more than maintenance runs for the benefit of the Russian crew of the International Space Station, with whom we now share research, facilities, and in the future, launch vehicles. On top of that we are facing multi-trillion dollar annual budget deficits a decade into the foreseeable future with over 100 trillion dollars in unfunded government liabilities to entitlement programs that no one in the public or private sector wants to touch. Most of the rest of the world is on equally shaky financial footing. The old misery index is back. People lucky enough to have jobs don’t have the bargaining power to demand raises that even keep pace with real inflation. I just don’t see the calamity in ending government-exclusive manned space flight right now.
In fact, this may really be a blessing in that it provides the impetus for transitioning this traditionally government-controlled activity to the private sector before it becomes a far more massive government boondoggle. Rather than weep for the loss of state control and national prestige (as if the private sector isn’t exponentially more capable of making America prestigious in the world than the American government), refocus the excitement you felt when Alan Shepard blasted off on the amazing possibilities that the privatization of space might entail. Where today your children would have to be part of a relative handful of government-selected applicants to ever even have a chance of going to space, your grandchildren may regard space flight as a commodity the way my generation considers that distant descendant of ARPANET to be practically a human right. It is indeed the end of an era, but also a beginning. The government relinquishing power is never anything to lament.
Bill and Patrick
Neither of you mention a most important factor in your perception’s. Bill and I were raised by people that fought and won WWII. Not just our fathers, but our uncles, some brothers, and our mothers and grannies were holding the fort. For those of us born between 1938 and 1946 there are impressions burned into our brains that we do not recognize because most people don’t remember things from when they were less than 5 years old. But we know not to touch the stove because Mom said so when we were two. We also remember that everywhere we went was woman’s land. Dad was in the Pacific, uncle Joe was in North Africa, and your playmates brother was shot at Omaha beach. They came home and didn’t say much, but we saw Victory at Sea and other shows that told us how it was. Now they talk about the casualties in Iraq and don’t know that the same number of soldiers died in one day during the Big One.
When I was about Patrick’s age, I told an elderly uncle that what someone said thousands of years ago was of no importance because this was TODAY. To his credit, he did not whup my butt. Today I have a grandson older than Patrick, I’ll just wait until life smacks him around a bit and he matures.
As a child, I knew men, including an uncle, who were in WW I, my older sister survived the flu epidemic, grandparents were alive when Lincoln was shot, I vividly remember Pearl Harbor. During WW II, I thought America would always remember those days and understand. It didn’t work out that way. Today, people have collective memories about Vietnam and now Iraq. To study history is not to LIVE it. People remember where they were when JFK was shot, but future generations will see it the way we see Lincoln’s assination; right now this generation remembers where they were on 9-11, but in the future, it will fade into Pearl Harbor. Things will happen to Patrick and society in the future, you don’t have to be Nostradamas to predict that, and if he gains any wisdom, his attitudes will change and he’ll have collective memories like the ones we geezers share about the space program.
Yes, I did get a bit nostalgic about space when the topic came up. Our lives were very much involved with it, but my husband’s company was long-ago sold, he is long gone and my life is so far removed from those years that I hardly recognize it was me.
I do realize that sometimes the ‘deep-pockets’ of the govt have to do the start-up work and, hopefully, to a certain extent it should be workable then in the private sector when it becomes profitable. So, we’ll see.
It’s plainly obvious, as I have said since my first post in this discussion, that having lived through a particular period and having a living memory of it creates a far more real and emotional connection to events. 9/11 could certainly be said to be my generation’s Pearl Harbor. The appreciation for the gravity of that event has already diminished among people who experienced it first hand – let alone a generation from now. The ongoing “Great Recession”, which has so dramatically changed the expectations and perspectives of many young people coming out of college in the last few years, will appear as nothing more than a minor data point on a long enough graph. Don’t forget that your parents thought the same things about you when you were in your mid 20′s as you think about youngsters today (and you’re probably both right). That’s the nature of history. George Orwell encapsulated it well, I think, when he said, “Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”
With that having been said, nostalgia for a bygone era is a poor basis for public policy. Snarky comments about the shallowness of thought of anybody under 30 notwithstanding, the only argument I can decipher here in favor of the continued involvement of NASA in manned spaceflight generally, and the space shuttle program in particular, is that NASA has contributed a lot to American technology in the past half century. It’s true enough, but it’s not really an affirmative argument. The space shuttle is 30 year old technology. In technological terms that is like a geological period. Did anyone honestly think it was going to continue to be deployed in perpetuity? If this same attitude had attended the discontinuation of the Saturn rocket program there wouldn’t be a space shuttle to speak of today.
Additionally, there’s still been no plausible reason proposed why SpaceX, Planet Space, Orbital Sciences Corp, SpaceDev, Virgin Galactic, or the dozens of other private space flight development companies cannot employ just as many people, make just as many discoveries, and contribute just as much to America’s technology industry and national prestige developing a next-generation space transport in the private sector. Isn’t it conservatives who extol the virtues of competition and the profit motive in every other area of public policy? Are we seriously arguing that the 100 trillion dollar combined Medicare and Social Security programs can and should be privatized (which I know the author supports, as do I), but that the (averaged, real dollar) 20 billion dollar NASA budget, only a portion of which is spent on manned space flight, can’t be replaced by private capital? That is the part of this piece I find most surprising. Blame it on youthful ignorance or a youthful lack of perspective, but I don’t see what separates NASA, and NASA exclusively, from the entire canon of modern conservative philosophy. That is reactionsim, not conservatism – they should not be mistaken for each other.
Interesting tidbit for what it’s worth: my paternal grandfather spent his entire career with General Dynamics and worked on projects including the Atlas rockets as an electronics technician.
While I agree that space exploration should be a private sector pursuit, my major concern is that it is certainly not one of this administration’s ‘favored’ industries. The current occupants of the White House and their minions have already displayed a penchant for throttling companies that don’t’ fit the ideological mold they cast for the future. Couple that with their proclivity for ‘punishing’ such industries doesn’t bode well for the future of manned space travel.
I do agree with Ivan’s post that because of the era we grew up in and the adults that populated that world; our perceptions are different.
“our perceptions are different”
And better!
:>)
I agree that private companies such as those listed by Mr. Mulligan are likely to continue to develop orbital capability, but I suspect their business will continue to consist largely in giving joy rides to billionaires who can pass the physical. I remain to be convinced that such companies will be major sources of systematic scientific research. Large-scale research of the sort represented by the various NASA deep space probes doesn’t look like a good way to provide a high level of return on investment.
While I am nostalgic over the demise of the manned space program at NASA; I believe that companies will invest heavily if they can be convinced of the ROI. It has to be obvious to even the most casual observer that government involvement (other than regulatory) in manned space exploration is over. Too many welfare recipients are struggling through life without flat screen TV’s and X-Box 360’s. We need to get back to our navel gazing C’mon; where’s our idea of ‘fairness’?
Large-scale research of the sort represented by the various NASA deep space probes doesn’t look like a good way to provide a high level of return on investment.
Almost without exception, every advancement in physics has some practical application that will eventually make its way into commercial products, so there’s certainly an incentive for the private sector to undertake research in deep space. I suspect that in the absence of a government monopoly in the field most major universities would sponsor programs for that purpose the same way they do in every other field of academic research, from chemistry, to medicine, to earth physics, to computer science.
The companies I listed, however, are concerned with orbital space science and manned space flight, which is (or was, I suppose) the function of the space shuttle program that is being discontinued, and the topic of this discussion. A market already exists for these products in the private sector, which is why these companies already exist in the first place. SpaceX will likely develop the next reusable transport that carries American astronauts to and from space for routine missions like resupplying Russia’s Tang stock on the ISS. Orbital Sciences already manufactures launch systems and satellites deployed by government and private enterprises to put things into low orbit. SpaceDev designed and built the rocket for the sub-orbital SpaceShipOne project, which in 2004 became the first privately-funded successful human space flight vehicle. A person such as Gestell who routinely demonizes the wealthy for their coldheartedness and greed should understand better than anyone that these venture capitalists and entrepreneurs would not be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on developing these technologies and capabilities without the expectation of making a return. If anything, handing off orbital, manned space flight to a private sector that is well placed to handle it should free up more of the NASA budget for more important research and space exploration. Weep not for the space shuttle.
I wouldn’t depend on universities to sponsor manned deep-space exploration anytime soon. Not as politically correct as these institutions have become. To expect a consortium of universities to pool resources for such a venture when there are so many ‘needy’ people without flat-screen TV’s and X-Box 360’s would raise the ire of today’s inside-the-beltway crowd to unimaginable heights.
I suspect that this will be dominated by private sector companies. There won’t be a Mars mission unless a company can find an easily exploitable resource. Likewise; for missions to the asteroid belt or the outer planets.
As for manned migration. I would actually believe that religious groups will, one day, drive the funding of deep space or interstellar manned migration. (See the book entitled Judgment Day written by James F. David.)
How predictive is this?
Private Spacecraft Plans Landmark Docking With International Space Station
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/07/26/private-spacecraft-plans-first-docking-with-international-space-station/?test=faces
A private company contract with NASA to deliver cargo to the ISS for 12% of the cost of a shuttle launch
Interesting indeed. Precisely the type of innovation and progress that I expect will continue to result from handing off such tasks from NASA to the private sector.
As far as manned deep-space missions or planetary colonizing, I don’t think the discontinuation of the space shuttle will affect those areas to the extent that they are even taken seriously by NASA in the first place. Landing humans on Mars is still at least 2 decades away from being a reality from a practical and logistical standpoint, and NASA’s priority in doing so doesn’t seem to be colonization (which presents its own unique set of challenges even once the capability to land and return men to the planet is proven). Human travel too much further even within our own solar system, for whatever purpose it would serve anyway, is severely limited just by the lifespan of a human being even assuming sufficiently advanced rocket technology. The real advantage in deep space exploration is to discover more concrete answers to the questions about our universe that confound physicists, and the dollars devoted to such research aren’t going to be affected by the discontinuation of shuttle missions, except to the extent that any realized cost savings may well get passed along to more interesting projects as I mentioned before.
For my part, I think I’ll be going down with spaceship earth if the proverbial excrement ever hits the fan :)