FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Privatization Is Killing the U.S. Space Program
Jan. 9 (EIRNS)—A cogent opinion piece by freelance writer Daniel John Sobieski in yesterday’s American Thinker juxtaposes the Chinese landing on the lunar far side to the destruction of the American manned space program, which once held the leadership in space. Having to now rely on the Russians to transport U.S. crews to the International Space Station is a “telling indictment” of how far the U.S. has sunk, he says, warning that while privatization may have some useful purposes, it is no substitute for government direction and support when it comes to serious missions for science and exploration.
“While China lays plans for the first permanent lunar base, we entrust our space exploration to the eccentric Elon Musk, whose SpaceX promises to give a Japanese billionaire the ultimate joyride around the Moon,”
he ridicules. Sobieski quotes the late Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon, that the activities of the commercial companies are not really “private,” calling them “NASA’s new way of spending money.” Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has similarly said it is a joke to call these projects “commercial,” since they have received tens of billions of dollars from NASA’s budgets.
Sobieski denounces the fact that
“the vast expertise and space exploration infrastructure we developed suddenly vanished as an administration [Obama] bent on expunging American exceptionalism from the face of the Earth abandoned space.”
“President Trump wants to return us to space,” but the nation has not returned to a country “whose President, John F. Kennedy once proudly pledged” to go to the Moon, Sobieski wrote. That is, the country, with an aroused citizenry looking to the stars, must be awakened if the U.S. is to once again take up the space exploration programs, that drive the creative foundation of our economy.
