Sic Transit Gloria Americanus?

I wasn't planning on writing about this today, but the fading glory of our space program moves me to write. In 1977, Jerry Pournelle wrote about the "2007 expedition to Ceres". The old Buck Rogers TV show spoke of the "last of NASA's deep space probes in 1987". The last?? when was the first???

Robert Heinlein spoke of the expectation that many of us had growing up of the inevitability of space travel. In 1949, he wrote in the preface to "The Man Who Sold the Moon":

" (the stories)...are of the "What-would-happen-if" sort, in which the "if", the basic postulate of each story, is some possible change in human environment latent in our present day technology or culture. Sometimes the possibility is quite remote; sometimes the postulated possibility is almost a certainty, as in the stories concerned with interplanetary flight."

Did you get that? In 1949, R.A. Heinlein considered interplanetary flight "almost a certainty".

How did we get from the first Model A Ford to the first walk on the moon in forty two years and from the first walk on the moon to the last flight of the shuttle program in exactly the same time?

And perhaps, more importantly, how do we get back?

Cross posted at LCR, Lady Cincinnatus , Say Anything.

This Last Week's Poll

This Last Week's Poll, "The Last Space Shuttle Lifted Off Friday:" (check for "Yes")

Should the program have been discontinued? (0%)

Should it be replaced with something else? (45%)

Should that replacement have been in place before retiring the shuttle program? (75%)

Will the discontinued shuttle program add to unemployment? (40%)

Is Obama's talk of "going to Mars" simply empty rhetoric in light of his gutting and his redirection of NASA? (70%)

Will the private sector be able to replace NASA in maintaining America's lead in space exploration? (30%)

Multiple choices and Obama's crack budget office accountants may account for totals greater than 100%

Thank you for your participation!
Not a scientific poll. Respondents are self selecting. Questions are drawn from fortune cookies, hieroglyphics and tomorrow’s New York Times.

Please make your opinion known in this week's poll.

Free Frontier - An Alternative to NASA?

If you, like many Americans, are disappointed in, or outright appalled at, the apparent collapse of our space exploration program into the irrelevancy of junk science and self esteem social science, you might find some encouragement in this video.

H/T Sister Toldjah

White House Denies NASA Chief Muslim Outreach Claim

A prepostorous NASA/Muslim alliance heralded from Obama and now denied. Graphic via Saberpoint.

by the Left Coast Rebel

Who do you believe, NASA administrator Charles Bolden or Robert Gibbs/Obama? Fox News:

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden must have misspoken when he told Al Jazeera last month that one of his top priorities is to reach out to Muslim countries.

"That was not his task and that's not the task of NASA," Gibbs said.

Bolden, though, said last month in the interview that it was President Obama who gave him that task. He made a similar claim in February.

The White House also backed up Bolden last week when his remarks first stirred controversy. A White House spokesman last Tuesday said Obama wants NASA to engage with the world's best scientists and that to meet that challenge, NASA must "partner with countries around the world like Russia and Japan, as well as collaboration with Israel and with many Muslim-majority countries."

Video of Gibbs denying NASA chief Charles Bolden's claim to Al Jazeera that one priority of NASA was to “find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering.”

Blatantly obvious, common sense exit question - if NASA chief Charles Boldon's Muslim claim is so absurd and being that he directly said that the Muslim outreach goal came straight from Obama himself, why does Charles Boldon still have a job?

Wouldn't he have been fired for such an absurd claim if it were not true?

Via Memeorandum, cross posted to Rational Nation, Proof Positive, LCR.

Ali Obama and the 535 Thieves

Hope and Change, Obama style!


Subtitle: Obama's new space program enters the seventh century!

Inspired by Michelle Malkin

Cross posted at Left Coast Rebel, Lady Cincinnatus

Krauthammer on Political Correctness at NASA

"This is a new height in fatuousness. NASA was established to get America into space and to keep is there. This idea to feel good about their past and to make achievements is the worst combination of group therapy, psychobabble, imperial condescension and adolescent diplomacy."

- Charles Krauthammer

NASA was established to get America into space and to keep is there. Could we get that bronzed and placed somewhere up on Capitol Hill? Under Obama, NASA is abandoning the United States preeminence in space in favor of global warming circle jerks and feel good political correctness. This guy has got to go!

More at News Busters
Cross posted at Proof Positive

Cross posted at Left Coast Rebel