Thursday, April 15 — 10:30 p.m. — 58.6°F
“We’ve been there before,” President Barack Obama quipped today, referring to the moon as he discussed his justifications for dismantling America’s human spaceflight program.
With that one statement, Obama revealed the full extent of his scientific ignorance, his lack of vision, and his unsuitability as the designer of the future of human space exploration.
Obama’s speech today at Kennedy Space Center was a sham—a poorly disguised attempt to portray his platitudes, arm-waving, and uncertain timetables as a coherent space exploration program.
Consider some of Obama’s major points:
Obama promises human explorers to Mars, but he canceled ongoing development of their space vehicle and offers nothing as a replacement.
Why doesn’t NASA need a human launch vehicle?
Well, at some unknown time in the future, some as yet undetermined private companies might decide they have a reason to want to build a launch vehicle, of a currently unknown design and ability, and whenever that happens, we’ll use their vehicle. That’s Obama’s grand vision for the future of U.S. human space exploration. Meanwhile, for a decade or two we’ll hitchhike on the Russians’ portable closet called Soyuz when we want to get someone into low orbit, as long as the Russians don’t get mad at us over something or other. And we won’t go anywhere else, because low orbit is the only place Soyuz can go.
Never mind that if some company actually does decide to pursue development of a human launch vehicle, they’ll be doing it for commercial purposes, and it may well be some other country that outbids us for their services. We already know what would constitute a winning bid: the original proposed budget for the Constellation program that Obama deemed too expensive.
What kind of timetable can we expect for a return to human exploration of the moon?
Are you kidding? Obama practically rolls his eyes in disgust at the prospect. The moon is soooo last century. We’ve been there before, remember? There can’t possibly be anything left to learn on the moon. Don’t listen to those so-called experts at NASA who cite economic expansion, development of global partnerships for peaceful purposes, scientific knowledge, and exploration preparation for other targets (such as Mars) as sound reasons for returning to the moon. Obama says been there, done that. Leave the moon to China.
OK, then what kind of timetable can we expect for human exploration of Mars?
Well, uh, how does somewhere around 2030 or 2035 sound? That seems like a sufficiently vague answer, considering such programs take a decade or more to design and put into place, and we currently have zero progress toward such a goal. Against the advice of his own appointed investigative committee, Obama is throwing out several years of research, planning, and development that had already taken place on the Ares I and Ares V rockets that were to be the workhorses in the Constellation program.
With no specific plan to offer, what else can Obama say besides dangling some arbitrary date two or three decades down the road? By that time one or more intervening Presidents will have changed NASA’s long-range plans and timetable to something else, and Obama will be off the hook. No one will bother to look back a quarter century and declare that Obama’s grand vision for space exploration was smoke and mirrors because it included no launch vehicle plan and no time table.
Pointing to Mars and declaring “Somehow! Someday!” is not a space exploration plan. It’s an embarrassment and a shame.
