I Do Not Think that President Kennedy Would Have Approved of Taking NASA Out with the Trash — the United States’ Lost Sense of Purpose Cuts Us Deeply

© 2011 Peter Free

 

02 July 2011

 

 

In sifting through our leadership’s statements over the last decades, I can’t find anything that really addresses and symbolizes the idea of American purpose — what happened to President Kennedy’s inspired American light?

 

Eric Sterner was once an associate deputy administrator for policy and planning at NASA, so he might be biased, but my memory of NASA’s influence agrees with his.

 

Here’s what he wrote yesterday:

 

This year marks the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s speech announcing plans to send Americans to the moon — and marks the end of the space shuttle program.

 

Today, many Americans have no memory of the moon landing, and NASA isn’t a source of pride but a budget line that needs to be cut.

 

At the height of the Apollo program, NASA consumed more than 4 percent of the federal budget. In the 1960s, that was a lot of money. Today, it’s a rounding error.

 

NASA’s budget for fiscal year 2011 is roughly $18.5 billion — 0.5 percent of a $3.7 trillion federal budget. In 2010, Americans spent about as much on pet food.

 

And those who complain that it is a waste to spend money in space forget that NASA creates jobs. According to the agency, it employs roughly 19,000 civil servants and 40,000 contractors in and around its 10 centers.

 

In the San Francisco area alone, the agency says it created 5,300 jobs and $877 million worth of economic activity in 2009. Ohio, a state hard-hit by the Great Recession that is home to NASA’s Plum Brook Research Station and Glenn Research Center, can’t afford to lose nearly 7,000 jobs threatened by NASA cuts.

 

Even more people have space-related jobs outside the agency. According to the Colorado Space Coalition, for example, more than 163,000 Coloradans work in the space industry. Though some build rockets for NASA, none show up in the agency’s job data.

 

© 2011 Eric Sterner, Five myths about NASA, Washington Post (01 July 2011) (paragraphs split)

 

Keep in mind that these are exactly the kind of technological jobs that our leaders keep saying are America’s new role in the global marketplace.

 

Yet these same leaders want to cut them.

 

 

“So what has NASA done that is still relevant to Americans?”

 

Sterner notes that NASA’s algorithms for the Hubble Space Telescope improve mammography processing.  Its deployable radio antennae were used to improve radio communications after Hurricane Katrina and Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.  NASA’s sensor development led to the development of bomb- and chemical-sniffing anti-terrorist technology.

 

NASA’s contribution to American science advancement has been huge.  The Hubble Telescope, its Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, and its continuing development of solar power are examples.  The rest of NASA’s contributions tend to be known only to those interested in science.  A pity.

 

 

“Well NASA gets in the way of private enterprise, doesn’t it?”

 

No.  And only opportunistic demagogue-fools like Newt Gingrich think so.

 

NASA’s projects have always been so immediately uneconomic that no sane private corporation would have even attempted to undertake them.

 

NASA, in fact, stands as an example of the arguable need for government-sponsored investment in science.  In an age in which other nations prominently recognize this, we Americans seem to have blinded ourselves to the actual nature of scientific and technological advancement.

 

Where the United States and the former Soviet Union once stood proudly alone, today:

 

Nine countries, including India, Israel and Iran, have placed payloads in orbit. More than 50 nations design, deploy, own or operate satellites without U.S. involvement.

 

China and Brazil, for example, have been co-developing Earth observation satellites for years. Japan and China have mapped the moon in considerable detail. India launched its own robotic moon mission in 2008, with a follow-up mission planned in cooperation with Russia.

 

© 2011 Eric Sterner, Five myths about NASA, Washington Post (01 July 2011) (paragraph split)

 

 

 President Kennedy’s humiliation

 

With the shuttle program terminated, we Americans have sunk to asking the Russians to get us to the Space Station.

 

You call that Independence Day pride?