{"id":5719,"date":"2010-06-14T12:09:42","date_gmt":"2010-06-14T16:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=5719"},"modified":"2010-06-14T12:09:42","modified_gmt":"2010-06-14T16:09:42","slug":"the-hubris-to-think-small","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/5719\/the-hubris-to-think-small\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hubris to Think Small"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a die-hard space enthusiast, I find it hard to believe that the Obama Administration can\u2019t seem to come up with $3 billion a year to sustain America\u2019s manned space program<\/a>. \u00a0From the folks who continue to bring us trillion dollar deficits and hundreds of billions in new spending for feel-good policies like universal health insurance, combating climate change, and subsidized job creation, can it really be that the end of the budget line stops just short of funding NASA\u2019s Constellation program<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Apparently so<\/a>.\u00a0 A commission created by President Obama concluded that NASA\u2019s current strategy is too expensive, lacks innovation, and takes too long to achieve its goal of getting Americans back to the Moon, and then off to Mars by 2020.\u00a0 The criticism reminds me of the adage about getting something fast, accurate, and cheap: you can have any two, but not all three.\u00a0 Thus, it looks like Americans will get nothing now that Obama\u2019s NASA chief is directing contractors to abort their work as the government prepares to terminate the program.<\/p>\n

So, good riddance thousands of science and engineering jobs; hello make-work Recovery Act projects!<\/p>\n

Though I\u2019m sure the Obama White House doesn\u2019t agree; killing the Constellation program is the latest example of an inner circle that can\u2019t see the forest for the trees.\u00a0 Afghanistan is the war that won\u2019t (can\u2019t?) end; no one seems to know how to \u201cplug the damn hole\u201d in the Gulf; and there is growing unease about the direction of the country from the Left and the Right.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t a presidential challenge to put an American on Mars by the end of this decade be the kind of national rallying point we need?<\/p>\n

It would inspire the best and brightest to pursue astrophysics instead of exotic financial careers, spur public and private investments in aerospace (and by extension, defense) technology, and give Americans a reason to wave Old Glory together apart from a sporting event or wartime.\u00a0 It would also make good on the president\u2019s implied promise to be the heir of John F. Kennedy, the first chief executive to call for a national moon shot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For that, though, this president would need a quality that has so far eluded him: the courage to lay down an unmistakable threshold of success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a die-hard space enthusiast, I find it hard to believe that the Obama Administration can\u2019t seem to come up with $3 billion a year to sustain America\u2019s manned space program. \u00a0From the folks who continue to bring us trillion dollar deficits and hundreds of billions in new spending for feel-good policies like universal health […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,1410,1409,288,1408],"class_list":["post-5719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-constellation","tag-john-f-kennedy","tag-nasa","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5719"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5722,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5719\/revisions\/5722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}