I know what some critics are going to say about this plan, because they’ve already said it<\/a>. This was Charles Krauthammer last year, on the<\/span> 40th anniversary of the first moon landing: \nAmerica’s manned space program is in shambles. Fourteen months from So what, you say? Don’t we have problems here on Earth? Oh, please. Why do it? It’s not for practicality. We didn’t go to the moon to spin This is exactly wrong. It’s does not make sense to spend money on Where I feel sympathy for the space program is not the space part, but the program. Florida’s Sen. Bil Nelson told reporters ““I, for one, intend to stand up Nelson’s plea Fly me to the moon? Eh, never mind. President Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2011 doesn’t cut very much, but it makes one budget slash that is sure to draw blood from certain constituencies: He’s wants to end the NASA moon program and encourage the private sector to pick up the slack. I know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n\n
\ntoday, for the first time since 1962, the United States will be
\nincapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone
\ninto Earth orbit. We’ll be totally grounded. We’ll have to beg a ride
\nfrom the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nPoverty and disease and social ills will always be with us. If we’d
\nwaited for them to be rectified before venturing out, we’d still be
\nliving in caves…\n <\/p>\n
\noff cooling suits and freeze-dried fruit. Any technological return is a
\nbonus, not a reason. We go for the wonder and glory of it.\n <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n“wonder and glory” without any practical benefit, and Krauthammer knows
\nthis perfectly well. It’s extraordinary that somebody who works himself
\ninto such a fury about pointless pork spending<\/a>, will abandon his orthodox focus on practicality only when the end is not people, no, but an inanimate satellite.<\/p>\n
\nand fight for NASA, and for the thousands of people who stand to lose
\ntheir jobs.” Job loss is a real concern, but one<\/span>
\nfact that will be obscured by the noise over our lunar drawback is that
\ntotal NASA spending will actually go up in Obama’s budget by $1
\nbillion. Other agencies that fall under discretionary spending will not
\nbe so lucky because of the announced freeze to demonstrate the
\nadministration’s seriousness about fiscal restraint. <\/p>\n
\nreveals the political impossibility of meaningful spending cuts. If it
\nis unacceptable to increase a department’s budget by one billion
\ndollars while cutting one of its programs whose advocates admit is “not
\nfor practicality,” then what part of fiscal
\nrestraint will be acceptable?
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