Thursday, March 4, 2010

We will soon loose access to the "High Ground"

I am a real "Space Junkie" from way back... I remember sitting in my grandmother's living room watching Neal Armstrong taking the first steps on the moon and her remarking that she had gone from a "horse and buggy to the moon" in her lifetime. Seeing the space program dying a bit at a time has been hard for me and now that we as a nation are essentially broke financially, it seems almost inevitable that we will loose our edge over the rest of the world in space technology. It sticks in my craw to rely on Russia to get our Astronauts into orbit and perhaps beyond. China is coming on strong and soon the E.U. and India will have viable manned programs on their own sooner rather than later. The "no bucks, no Buck Rogers" axiom seems to be our future. As hateful as it is, we may just have to wait for commercial companies, companies like Boeing, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and others, to step up and do what NASA and the political savants in Washington who decide operational imperatives and budgets could not do: create a viable, commercially sustainable and growing space presence that will not be subject to political whim and mismanagement that seems endemic in the NASA administration and in the halls of power in Washington. Perhaps, someday, we will have leadership worthy of our dreams and aspirations as we once did when we went to the moon inside of a decade. It is clear that there is none to be found in either NASA or in Washington now, nor does any appear to be on the horizon. How pathetic...