A Defense Against the New [corporate] NASA
Washington, we have a problem. On February 1st of this year President Obama released his FY 2011 federal budget proposal. This effectively cancelled NASA’s Constellation program, the successor to the space shuttle. Obama called for a new step, albeit one giant step backward for mankind and America, that involves utilizing commercial companies to transport American astronauts into space.
The presidents reasoning for this maneuver are to trim back NASA’s long-term budget and have the agency focus on research and development rather than manned spaceflight. Additionally, Obama believes that handing over space operations to commercial companies will create jobs in this beaten down economy. Job creation is key in politics right now, but the president is focused on the end and not the means. The current NASA workforce must have slipped his mind. Soon, thousands of NASA employees will be handed pink slips. Tragically, that wasn’t the only thing President Obama overlooked.
NASA has utilized commercial contractors since the first American, Alan Shepard, was rocketed into space, but never in sole capacity of carrying humans into space and manned commercial spaceflight is currently grounded.
No man has more experience in the commercial space industry than Burt Rutan, an engineer and designer of the first commercial rocket ship. If anyone has a good grip on this whole situation it’s him, and Mr. Rutan has stated that he’s “fearful that the commercial guys will fail. That would be a very big mistake for America to make.”
America has always been the leader in space exploration. Yes, the Russians launched the first man into space, but we’ve had the upper hand the past five decades. We are at risk of loosing this preeminent leadership position, and if this country is willing to give up that, what will we willing to give up next? When Americans return to the moon, will they be raising the stars and stripes for the United States or the corporate logo for Starbucks?
