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This article appears in the March 18, 2016 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
EDITORIAL

To Save the U.S. Economy,
Revive the Space Program!

by Kesha Rogers of Texas, a Leader of the LaRouche PAC Policy Committee

[PDF version of this article]

It’s in the DNA of our country to explore, and we must never stop doing this;
we must lead, we must learn, and we must discover.

                                          —Astronaut Scott Kelly

Scott Kelly is absolutely right! It is in our cultural DNA to explore! It is in the DNA of every human being to explore. This is the creative nature that is unique only to the human species, the only species that can create new scientific breakthroughs, the only species that can conquer space.

Now the United States faces a critical decision which will determine the future of our nation. Will we continue to go along with the dying policy of the trans-Atlantic system, which is a policy of death for our U.S. economy at the hands of the bankrupt Wall Street financial institutions and the destructive policies of the last four terms of the Bush and Obama Administrations? Or, will we restore a national mission and vision for the future of our nation, to once again lead the world in scientific and economic progress? We have to lift our nation once more out of the depths of despair. It is urgent that we revive a scientific mission, if we are to restart the economic progress of our nation again. This must be done in cooperation with the effort being led by the nations of Russia and China, as leaders of the BRICS nations, to bring about a new “win-win” paradigm for the direction of mankind on the planet. The greatest tool that we have in the United States for bringing about that renewed mission and renewed optimism for our nation, is fully launching a revival of our national space program, with all its irreplaceable contributions to scientific and economic progress.

In a discussion with activists on March 10, Lyndon LaRouche declared, “The space program has been the basis for all competent economic policy. It is something that Obama shut down, and destroyed the possibility to organize the economy.” He elaborated further, “We need a scientific program based on scientifically qualified principles. The only way to save the U.S. economy is with the space program. Put the people back to work. Get rid of Obama and the Bush family, and let’s get back to rebuilding the United States.”

This fight and mission, to revive our space program, is one in which I have continued to lead. In 2010, I launched a national campaign for U.S. Congress to denounce the egregious attacks on our space program, the cuts to manned space program, and the canceling of Constellation by President Obama. This was one of the greatest wrongs done to our nation by any President, because he shut down the basis of our ability to improve our relationship with our solar system.

This is a policy that must now be reversed, or the United States may never recover again. Today, faced with a worse than useless slate of Presidential pre-election candidates, I have re-launched that initiative on an even broader level, to change the subject of policy discussion and debate, and restore a national mission centered around putting our space program at the forefront of our national agenda.

Over the last few weeks, in expanding on these efforts, I have held events and attended meetings to organize some of the best scientific and most-skilled minds of our nation,— who have been instrumental in the building of our manned space program at Johnson Space Center,— to recognize that what we are fighting for is nothing less than the future of our nation. Through these interventions, a growing cadre of qualified scientists, engineers, and astronauts are beginning to do more than reminisce on the old glory days, or lament today’s lack of leadership and budgets; they are beginning to use their scientific authority to define what our future must be. With this, we have witnessed a renewed optimism, and new willingness to speak up.

Visionary Leadership

It has always been the creative nature of mankind to explore new horizons and to create new frontiers. But the cause of exploring and conquering space, presents to man a whole new set of questions and new challenges that must be solved. The first step to solving the challenges of understanding man as man in the universe, starts with vision. Our space program would not have witnessed the great breakthroughs it has afforded to us, increasing the progress of mankind, if it had not been for the creative imagination of great visionaries and pioneers of space. Yet the pioneers of rocketry and space flight knew that their ideas would never even come close to being realized without a leader with vision. Our nation’s leaders who had vision, who understood that human progress starts by removing all limitation to growth, have been few and far between. Great visionaries understood that where there was no vision, the people would perish.

President John F. Kennedy was a brilliant example of true leadership with vision. President Kennedy was inspired by the efforts of great leaders like President Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, whose American system tradition he adhered to. It was under the leadership of Lincoln with the development of the trans-continental railway system, and Franklin Roosevelt’s Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), that our nation saw some of its greatest economic progress. Now Kennedy had a unique opportunity to put the United States back on the map toward greatness, and lead the world in the drive for developing space. The vision for the space program that Kennedy set out for the nation was one that would transform our economic progress in virtually every field. This did not happen without a fight, but what Kennedy showed, like Lincoln and FDR, was that we could take the most desperate and economically-collapsed areas of our nation and turn them into productive machines. This is why President Kennedy’s announcement that we would land a man on the Moon and return him safely to earth before the end of the decade, was not just a short term thrill or merely the effort to come in first in a space race, but would prove instrumental to the economic progress of the nation.

Kennedy understood that it was not just the destiny our nation to go to the Moon, but, as all the great pioneers of space have taught us, it was our destiny to conquer and terraform all of space for the progress of all mankind.

These words expressed by President Kennedy in his famous Rice University speech, given in Houston, Texas, on Sept. 12, 1962, make clear Kennedy’s promotion of the true cause of mankind in conquering space.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people.

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Today, our nation is left void of a real vision, and of competent leadership acting for the future. We, the American people, must demand a return to sanity now. The space program once again stands as the only viable solution for pulling the United States out of the depths of death and despair, and reviving the greatest talents and minds of our nation. We must take these great resources of mind and put them to work again in restoring the physical and economic progress of the country, just as we did under the leadership of Presidents Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Kennedy. We require a vision and true leadership, to inspire the people of our nation, and to once again inspire the world. This effort will not be achieved by the United States alone, but only through abandoning the dead corpse of the trans-Atlantic system, run by a ruinous British empire and its destructive puppet in the White house, Obama. We must join with nations like Russia, India, and especially China, to bring about a renewed mission, putting an end to the political and economic strife by turning our eyes to the common aims of mankind, by developing mankind’s understanding of the universe in which we live, through the development of space. Where shall we take our minds? The Chinese are leading the charge. . . to the far side of the Moon!

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