Once upon a time, the U.S. had a manned space program

The Sun (Western New York): Once upon a time, the U.S. had a manned space program
Early next month, a few people will take a moment to remember the day 50 years ago when the first manned space flight took place.

Yuri Gagarin made history on April 12, 1961, when the Soviet Union drew first blood in the space race. It would be another 10 months before American John Glenn successfully orbited the earth after two other U.S. astronauts made suborbital flights.

By 1968, the Apollo program took Americans farther than ever before, out of the grip of gravity and to the moon. Now, there is a real possibility that it might be years before another American leaves Earth orbit again, at least aboard an American vessel.

President Barack Obama’s proposed 2012 budget would freeze the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s budget and eliminate an anticipated $6 billion increase.

The increased funding would have been used to modernize the Kennedy Space Center in Florida as well as develop a new heavy-lift launch vehicle, ushering in the next phase of the nation’s manned space exploration program. The budget is still in the development phase and can be altered by Congress.

Once the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, the trains didn’t stop running. They ran farther and more often. More trains were built, and an industry was born.

President Obama’s proposal focuses on a slight increase in the amount of money used to operate the International Space Station, which is expected to remain operational for another nine years. It also calls for an increase in spending for the development of commercial space “taxis” to take crews to the orbiting platform to conduct research. But that’s as far as we will venture.

Project Constellation, the program intended to return astronauts to the moon, was canceled by the Obama administration. The rocket and spaceship from Project Constellation will be modified for future manned missions to unspecified destinations. A total of $2.8 billion will be allocated for these two components.

Yet funding was cut significantly for improvements to the space center itself, where launches would take place. That translates to a drop in future Space Coast employment and certain layoffs.

The vast spaceport may look more like an annex at a small town airfield.

To have made so much progress in the last 50 years only to have NASA pushed to the sidelines seems shortsighted at best. The president needs to establish clear goals for our space exploration program, not move one square at a time each year when it’s time to draw up the budget.

Gone are the days when somebody’s mom would bring a television to our classroom so that we could watch a launch on a fuzzy black and white screen. Last week I watched the launch of the space shuttle Discovery streaming live on my PC.

Granted, the space program is expensive. But to abandon it or reduce it to a taxi service is an insult.
NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. walks the politically correct path of doublespeak in his 2012 Budget Request Executive Summary, viewable on www.nasa.gov.

“The Agency continues to develop a capability-driven framework for affordable, sustainable, and realistic exploration, and this budget aligns our plans with the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 in a long-term, affordable, and sustainable manner,” he said. “We will build the future through those investments in American industry to create a new job-producing engine for the U.S. economy while we remain committed to Federal goals to be stewards of our communities and make progress in our use of clean energy at our facilities.”

I liked it better when President John F. Kennedy said, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

Now those were words we could understand, even on a black and white TV.