Gets technology ‘off the ground’
Charles Krauthammer makes sense when he complains about Obama’s cancellation of manned spaceflight programs [“Obama closes the New Frontier,” Opinion, Feb. 13]. Those who think that NASA is just another government money pit need to think again. Unlike the trillions that Obama is wasting on bailout programs that have neither created jobs nor helped financially strapped homeowners, the space program does have a payback for the American people.
Without the space program, much of the technology that we take for granted wouldn’t exist. At its infancy, much of our technology was simply too expensive and the payoff was too far in the future for private industry to invest in development. Agencies such as NASA provide the seed money to get such technology off the ground — no pun intended. Private industry then refines this technology and reduces the cost to a level that allows the public to benefit from it.
While it is true our economy needs some immediate action, Obama’s nearsighted and scientifically ignorant policies are not only destroying our country’s economic power and our “space superiority,” they are also putting an end to American technological innovation. This may be a fall that our country may never recover from.
— Neil Foster, Renton
Krauthammer is a hypocrite
For decades, Charles Krauthammer has argued for privatization of all sorts of government functions — including the military, schools, health care and Social Security. Yet now that the Obama administration wants to privatize key elements of the space program, Krauthammer is the first to cry foul, calling this decision the end of the “new frontier.”
While it’s clear that Krauthammer loves privatization, it’s also evident that he loves to oppose any and every policy of the Obama administration even more. Here’s a paradigm case where he chooses opposition to Obama over the achievement of one of his own most precious goals.
None of this is a surprise though. Hypocrisy is mother’s milk to Krauthammer.
— David Marshak, Bellingham