DumbHammer

Charles Krauthammer: Despite ridicule, Bush's space plan isn't pie in the sky

12:02 AM CST on Sunday, January 18, 2004

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Most Americans had long since stopped paying attention to manned space flight.

The shuttle? So what (except during some stunt like the John Glenn flight)?

The moon? Been there, done that.

Four years ago, I wrote an article ("On to Mars," The Weekly Standard, Jan. 31, 2000) advocating phasing out the space shuttle, abandoning the space station, establishing a moon base and then eventually going on to Mars.

It was greeted with yawns by those who noticed it at all.

Even my friends excused my fondness for the moon as the kind of eccentricity one expects from a guy who has an interest in prime numbers and once drove to New York to see a chess match.

Ridiculed

Well, things have gotten worse. Last week, when the president proposed to phase out the space shuttle, phase down the space station, establish a moon base and then eventually go on to Mars, he was met not with yawns but with ridicule.

"He wants to build like a space station on the moon, and then from the moon, he wants to launch people to Mars," said a positively gleeful David Letterman. "You know what this means, ladies and gentlemen? He has been drinking again."

And Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, whose usual specialty is unintended humor, got the laugh of last Sunday's Iowa debate when he suggested President Bush was going to the moon and Mars to find weapons of mass destruction.

Part of the reason for the unfriendly reception was the way the Bush proposal was rolled out. It was spun as a great new goal to unify the nation ?– a "Kennedy moment" to kick off an election year.

That was as clumsy as George H.W. Bush saying "Message: I care" or Howard Dean discovering Jesus as he heads south.

If you are going to do something blatantly political, don't telegraph it.

Particularly stupid

The presentation was particularly stupid because I believe the plan would have been proposed exactly as is, with or without an election year, with or without the phony Kennedy overlay.
In fact, there isn't an ounce of political advantage in the proposal. An Associated Press poll found that a majority of Americans would rather spend money on domestic needs.

As for the Kennedy stuff, the Bush proposal has less to do with a vision of man's destiny than with a totally dysfunctional government agency.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration gave us the glory of Apollo, then spent the next three decades twirling around in space in low earth orbit studying zero-G nausea.

It is crazy, and it might have gone on forever had it not been for the Columbia tragedy.

Columbia made painfully clear what some of us have been saying for years: It not only is pointless to continue orbiting endlessly around the earth; it is ridiculously expensive and indefensibly risky.

The president's proposal is a reasonable, measured reconfiguration of the manned space program.

True, he couldn't go all the way. Binding agreements with other countries made it impossible for him to scrap the space station ?– a financial sinkhole whose only purpose is its own existence. But he is for phasing it down and for retiring the shuttle within six years.

That frees up huge amounts of NASA money to do what is useful and exciting: going to other worlds. For this generation, the only alternative to wandering about in low earth orbit ?– other than the Luddite alternative of giving up manned flight completely ?– is to return to the moon. And this time, stay there.

Human habitation

Establishing the first human habitation on a celestial body wouldn't just allow for extraordinarily interesting science (from geology to astronomy) and be the locus for extraterrestrial manufacturing.
It would be ?– those without an ounce of romance in their souls are advised to skip the rest of this sentence ?– the most glorious human adventure since the Age of Exploration five centuries ago.

As for Mars, there is nothing Buck Rogers in the president's proposal.

It will take decades to work out how to get there safely. There is no Apollo crash program. There simply is an annual 5 percent increase in the NASA budget ?– which itself is less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

Those who want to divert even such paltry sums to domestic spending undoubtedly would have objected to Magellan's costly plans, too.

Look. We can stay on Earth. We can keep tumbling about in orbiting Tinkertoys. Or we can walk the moon again and prepare for Mars.

I can't imagine an easier choice.link

"I can't imagine an easier choice." That's utterly preposterous. What is particularly stupid is Krauthammer's lack of attention to the true needs of the nation. Bush's proposal is so utterly inane. It comes at a time when the Uhemorrhagingrraging technology jobs, and those that are available here, are paying on average 23% less than they did three years ago.

The choice is, there is no choice. We as a nation need to pay down our debt, attempt to re-establish a manufacturing base, and get our trade deficit in better shape before embarking on things we've already done. We have proven to be unworthy of stewardship of our own world, so let's go and pollute another.

The problem with the stammering pundit's analysis, is that it is no analysis at all.

Particularly stupid, Dr.? That the Washington Post allows you to continue to waste space on its editorial page is what I find particularly stupid. Uncritical cheerleading has no place on an editorial page of a paper as important as the WaPo.

Millionaire neo-con pundits call for space exploration from the protection of their keyboards without a strategy to pay for it. We still have committments in Afghanistan for chrissakes. Then there is Iraq, and the impending unstoppable retirement of the boomers.

If it makes sense, private enterprise will pick up the tab, not merely live fat off of government contracts. Bush once talked about sacrifice. I wonder if he meant the sacrifice of America's future at the cost of present ambition?