The Hitchhikers Guide....

 

 

"Not too many years ago, we were driving the limo - today we are only hitchhikers..."

I saw something recently on Fox News which gave me pause to think. I was about how America is shrinking on the world stage. One of the areas the show addressed was the space program and NASA. It is hard to believe it was only fifty years ago President Kennedy challenged the nation to beat the Russians in the space race by landing on the moon before 1970. Today, if we want to go into space, we need to beg the Russians for a ride.

Apollo, Gemini, the Shuttle - they are all gone now. Relicts of history. Oh, they served their purpose nicely. Each was another step in getting us closer to the heavens. I even understand the need to mothball the shuttle fleet. It was expensive and aging. What I don't understand is why we did it without the follow-on program being up and running.

The Constellation Program was to be the natural follow on to the Shuttle Program. This was going to be exciting stuff, as it would take us to the next level. According to NASA, the "stated goals of the Constellation Program were to gain significant experience in operating away from Earth's environment and develop technologies needed to opening and broadening the space frontier..." Translation - this was the next step needed in putting a human on Mars.

However, our current President, who can spend money faster than a sailor on leave, wanted no part of this crapola such as a strong military or robust space program. Besides downsizing our military to a seventy year low, in 2010 he killed the Constellation Program. One might ask, "What did he replace it with?"  Bus tokens for rides on Russian rockets to get up to the ISS.

I am glad that President Kennedy, who was a man of vision, is not around to see demise of our once proud space program. So much has been happened under our "hopey and changey" environment, I completely lost track of our dead space program. This is yet one more national tragedy of the Obama regime. In the past six years, we have become a debtor nation with a Woodrow Wilson size military and no space program. We do however, have half the country living on food assistance.

I just hope once the Russians or Chinese get to Mars they will send home pictures. As for us, we will continue to use the hitchhikers guide to the universe...