Columnist Charles Krauthammer calls the ceremonial interment of the space shuttle Discovery an act of "willed American decline." He's certainly right about that. It is an historic retreat for America.
It was under John F. Kennedy, a liberal Democrat, that America was summoned to greatness. Frustrated by a series of Soviet "firsts" in space -- first earth satellite (Sputnik), first man in space (Yuri Gagarin) -- the young President Kennedy knew that his talk of "getting America moving again" would ring hollow if the Soviets bested us in space.
For the USSR, space was vitally important. Nikita Khrushchev was the Communist Party boss who had famously denounced his dead predecessor, Josef Stalin. Under Khrushchev, Stalin's embalmed remains were hauled out of Lenin's tomb, cremated, and buried in an obscure Kremlin grave. But how to legitimize his own dictatorship? How to show the world that communism was the wave of the future? Space. For Nikita Sergeivich Khruschev, Marxism-Leninism would be validated by conquering space. Russian, not English, would be the first language spoken in the cosmos. Cosmonauts, not astronauts, would lead progressive mankind.
Khrushchev chose Yuri Gagarin to be the first man to orbit the earth because he was a clean-cut, fit, and outspokenly atheist young Soviet pilot. When Gagarin came safely to earth, he told a press conference he had seen "nyet boga" up there. No God. One Soviet historian, Zheyva Sveltilova, told credulous Westerners that when the hammer and sickle conquers space, "people who now believe in God will reject him. Such belief won't be logical or natural. Man will be stronger than God."
It is noteworthy that the brave Apollo 8 astronauts -- Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders -- the first human beings to leave Earth's orbit and travel to the moon -- did not reject God. In fact, they read from the Book of Genesis as their spacecraft orbited the moon. On Christmas Eve 1968, no less. And Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, celebrated Christian communion in the lunar lander as Neil Armstrong of Apollo XI took his famous "giant leap for mankind."
President Kennedy resolved to find that one goal that could inspire Americans and capture the imagination of mankind -- and which he knew the United States could best its communist adversary: the moon. At a time when leading Republicans -- Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Jr. -- carped that the effort to reach the moon would be too costly, Kennedy's vision prevailed. He knew that being number one in space would pay dividends on Earth. Surely, it has. The entire computer revolution we are living through was spurred by America's moon landing.
In his jaunty way, JFK said, "America has thrown her hat over the wall of space and we have no choice but to follow." President Kennedy was right. The American Apollo program was one of the greatest events in all of human history. By turning our backs on JFK's achievement, we have consented to national humiliation and national decline.
An American astronaut was asked recently what advice she had for a young child interested in space. "Learn Russian," she said. Inspired by John F. Kennedy, America went to the moon. On his grave at Arlington the night of July 20, 1969, someone put a simple note: "The Eagle has landed." In the Age of Obama, the Eagle has fallen.
Just how stupid do you think we are, Mr. Blackwell and Mr. Morrison???? You insult our intelligence with your ridiculous piece.....
Embarrassing.
By the way...were you that embarrassed when the U.S. depended on the Russian Soyuz to transport our astronauts and supplies to the International Space Center for over 2 years? What? you forgot that our Shuttle fleet was grounded for over 2 years after the Columbia Disaster? Just thought you might need to be reminded of that FACT
And what the heck does "belief in God" have to do with this topic?
Finally:
1) Space flight commercialization is a thriving field - we don't get much news about it, but it's very real!
2) Just talked to someone fresh from a visit to Kennedy Space Center. Asked him if it was depressing. No, he said - then he described seeing the prototype of the vehicle for a manned flight to Mars.
It is hard for those of us who remember the first shuttle launch to watch the shuttle retired, but it neither the end of our space program nor a symbol of our decline...though the latter is also quite real - and began well before Obama arrived on the scene! (And do we even need to ask what would happen if Obama had tried to spearhead a big new space program?)
Instead, NASA should have built an intermediate version of the X-15 to carry cargo and then
assembled 25 of them before the Shuttle was commissioned.
Rockwell then oversold the Shuttle and the Russians are still laughing !
Funny how Politicians and Lobbyists keep missing the Mark ?
And it costs soooo much money. When we have little things like world hunger that we can't even solve. Hell, we can't even solve the hunger problems at our doorsteps. How about we figure out how to live on Earth NOW, then worry about space when we can figure out the basics.
We need to be sinking money into green energy, world hunger, etc... So we have somewhere to live in a hundred years. As it is we are about to finish off any hope of survival, if we don't fix these problems now there won't be a future to explore space.
Now let's go back to April 2006 (those would be the Bush Years)
Bush's NASA cuts halts much research
"We are going to lose a whole generation of researchers because there is no funding to train them," Millie Hughes-Fulford, a former space shuttle payload specialist now at the University of California-San Francisco, told Gannett. "They look at people who put their life's work into NASA and see those people have no funding."