“Foremost,” the NASA administrator described his marching orders from Obama, “he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world.” The great new mission of America's space agency would be to make Muslims "feel good about their historic contribution to science.”
President Trump has another mission for NASA.
Looking over at former Senator Schmitt, the last living man to walk on the moon in the Apollo 17 mission forty-five years ago, President Trump said, “Today, we pledge that he will not be the last.”
“This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars and, perhaps, someday to many worlds beyond.”
The message was clear. American greatness would no longer be held hostage to political correctness.
Obama had reimagined NASA as an “Earth Improvement Agency” that would push Global Warming and Muslim self-esteem. NASA’s iconic shuttles were turned into museum pieces. The replacement vehicles were sidelined. Bush era plans to go the Moon and Mars were thrown out. What was left of NASA’s space exploration was reduced to buying tickets on rickety Russian Soyuz rockets just to get into space.
And the Russians jacked up the price.
“By buying the services of space transportation, rather than the vehicles themselves, we can continue to ensure rigorous safety standards are met,” Obama had bafflingly claimed.
Neil Armstrong shot back, “It was asserted that by buying taxi service to Low Earth Orbit rather than owning the taxis, ‘we can continue to ensure rigorous safety standards are met’. The logic of that statement is mystifying.”
But the Armstrong era was over.
Administrator Charles Bolden, the most inept hack to oversee NASA, announced that the era of American space exploration had ended. “We’re not going to go anywhere beyond low earth orbit as a single entity. The United States can’t do it… no single nation is going to go to a place like Mars alone.”
“NASA will not take the lead on a human lunar mission. NASA is not going to the Moon,” he whined.
“We are probably never again going to see Americans on the Moon, on Mars, near an asteroid, or anywhere,” he insisted.
President Trump disagrees.
While CNN’s talking heads were jabbering about how many sodas he drinks, President Trump was signing Space Policy Directive 1 which declares that the United States will “lead the return of humans to the Moon”, a Mars expedition and “human expansion across the solar system”.
Muslim self-esteem may be one of the casualties along with the media’s vapid nonsense.
Having former Senator Schmitt at the signing was a powerful reminder of what we had aspired to. And what we had lost. Apollo 17 wasn’t just our last manned mission to the moon; it was the last time we left low-earth orbit. For forty-five years, we’ve had a space program in name only.
The last time we left our own planet, Nixon was in the White House.
Schmitt was a young man when he became the last person to step out from a spacecraft onto the moon. He’s 82 now. The rest of his crew is dead. The photo he took of the earth hangs on a thousand dorm room walls. But none of those students have had the opportunity to take another one like it. And if Obama had gotten his way, that’s how the legacy of our space program would have ended.
When Obama trashed what was left of our space program, the space shuttles were parceled off to connected museums and cities. And were stowed next to the Apollo and Gemini gear as relics. Children could peer at them through glass walls as the artifacts of another culture that actually did great things.
“Imagine the possibilities waiting in those big, beautiful stars if we dare to dream big.” President Trump urged. “And that’s what our country is doing again: We’re dreaming big.”
The media is pretending that Obama had some sort of space exploration plan that Trump scrapped.
He didn’t. Take it from the first man to walk on the moon.
“With regard to President Obama's 2010 plan, I have yet to find a person in NASA, the Defense Department, the Air Force, the National Academies, industry, or academia that had any knowledge of the plan prior to its announcement,” Neil Armstrong wrote. "I believe the President was poorly advised.”
That’s an understatement.
The media has been touting Obama’s asteroid nonsense. The National Research Council found that the plan wasn’t even generally accepted within NASA. “The 2011 NASA strategic plan and associated documents do not, in our view, constitute a strategy,” study chairman Albert Carnesale had said.
There is a strategy now. It doesn’t involve Muslim self-esteem or making Al Gore even richer. Nor is it about disposable missions that don’t do anything except keep agencies and contractors in business. Instead it reboots the Republican plan of building a sustainable pathway to the stars by returning to the moon. If Obama hadn’t trashed it for Muslim self-esteem, 2015 would have seen our first lunar mission.
The destruction of our space program was one of the wounds that Obama and his cronies inflicted on the nation. President Trump’s space directive intends to heal another of them by rebuilding American greatness. But what has crippled our ability to move forward is that plans for space exploration have to be carried out over longer terms than that of any single occupant of the White House.
While space exploration is most associated with President Kennedy, the radicalization of his political party has made the heroic idea of Americans setting foot on another world much less popular with his Democrat successors. The manned journeys of the Space Exploration Initiative of the first Bush administration were replaced by Bill Clinton with probes. Clinton’s new "faster, better, cheaper" NASA proved to be none of the above. History repeated itself with Obama torpedoing Bush’s plans.
Clinton and Obama just didn’t see manned space exploration as something worth funding. Obama was far more interested in Muslim self-esteem than in a human presence across the solar system. If another Democrat succeeds Trump, the odds are good that he or she will do the same thing.
But unlike some of his predecessors, Trump isn’t waiting for years before tackling space policy. And Pence’s presence ensures that there will be a vocal advocate for the space program in the White House. The earlier you start a program, the more time it has to develop momentum and win support from interests in Congress. And that makes it harder to kill. That’s why, despite his best efforts, Obama wasn’t able to fully kill Constellation. The earlier Trump starts implementing his vision, the more momentum it will have and the harder it will be for the Obamas and Clintons of tomorrow to stop our space program.
The Democrats are expected to fight Trump’s nomination of Rep. Bridenstine to head NASA for partisan reasons. At Bridenstine’s hearing, Senate Democrats showed no interest in discussing space policy. Instead they wanted to pound their pulpits about global warming, Muslim self-esteem and gay marriage.
"So if you're NASA administrator, and someone asks you questions about sexual morality, you're going to stay consistent with your past statements on how you view same-sex couples raising children?" Senator Cory Booker bizarrely asked.
Senator Patty Murray announced that she would vote against the former Navy pilot because of his appearances at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and other “anti-Muslim groups”. For Murray, Muslim self-esteem is apparently still central to NASA’s mission.
Booker and Murray demonstrate the Dem unseriousness and disinterest in space exploration. Why bother going to the stars when you can wallow in the sewer of intersectional identity politics instead.
Democrats have claimed that anyone who doesn’t believe that the Flying Global Warming Monster is sending storms to punish us for not sending enough money to Al Gore’s carbon credit schemes can’t work at NASA.
But Schmitt, the last living man to walk on the moon, has made it clear that he doesn’t believe it.
President Trump is rebuilding NASA as an agency of human space exploration while discarding the post-modernist angst about human industrial progress that powers pseudoscientific myths about ‘Global Warming’. A new age of American confidence is discarding these insecurities about our purpose and place in the universe. It’s replacing them with purpose, vision and meaning.
The leftward tilt of the Democrats has convinced them that this nation’s founding, our technological achievements and our entire civilization, are tragic mistakes, if not outright crimes. It’s no wonder that ideologues who don’t believe in America, also don’t believe in Americans traveling to other worlds.
But there are still Americans in this country. And their vision goes beyond adding another letter to the LGBTQIA alphabet, another microaggression grievance and another angry protest against America.
"After braving the vast unknown and discovering the new world, our forefathers did not only merely sail home," President Trump said. "They stayed, they explored, they built, they guided, and through that pioneering spirit, they imagined all of the possibilities that few dared to dream. Today, the same spirit beckons us to begin new journeys of exploration and discovery, to lift our eyes all the way up to the heavens."
President Trump has another mission for NASA.
Looking over at former Senator Schmitt, the last living man to walk on the moon in the Apollo 17 mission forty-five years ago, President Trump said, “Today, we pledge that he will not be the last.”
“This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars and, perhaps, someday to many worlds beyond.”
The message was clear. American greatness would no longer be held hostage to political correctness.
And the Russians jacked up the price.
“By buying the services of space transportation, rather than the vehicles themselves, we can continue to ensure rigorous safety standards are met,” Obama had bafflingly claimed.
Neil Armstrong shot back, “It was asserted that by buying taxi service to Low Earth Orbit rather than owning the taxis, ‘we can continue to ensure rigorous safety standards are met’. The logic of that statement is mystifying.”
But the Armstrong era was over.
Administrator Charles Bolden, the most inept hack to oversee NASA, announced that the era of American space exploration had ended. “We’re not going to go anywhere beyond low earth orbit as a single entity. The United States can’t do it… no single nation is going to go to a place like Mars alone.”
“NASA will not take the lead on a human lunar mission. NASA is not going to the Moon,” he whined.
“We are probably never again going to see Americans on the Moon, on Mars, near an asteroid, or anywhere,” he insisted.
President Trump disagrees.
While CNN’s talking heads were jabbering about how many sodas he drinks, President Trump was signing Space Policy Directive 1 which declares that the United States will “lead the return of humans to the Moon”, a Mars expedition and “human expansion across the solar system”.
Muslim self-esteem may be one of the casualties along with the media’s vapid nonsense.
Having former Senator Schmitt at the signing was a powerful reminder of what we had aspired to. And what we had lost. Apollo 17 wasn’t just our last manned mission to the moon; it was the last time we left low-earth orbit. For forty-five years, we’ve had a space program in name only.
The last time we left our own planet, Nixon was in the White House.
Schmitt was a young man when he became the last person to step out from a spacecraft onto the moon. He’s 82 now. The rest of his crew is dead. The photo he took of the earth hangs on a thousand dorm room walls. But none of those students have had the opportunity to take another one like it. And if Obama had gotten his way, that’s how the legacy of our space program would have ended.
When Obama trashed what was left of our space program, the space shuttles were parceled off to connected museums and cities. And were stowed next to the Apollo and Gemini gear as relics. Children could peer at them through glass walls as the artifacts of another culture that actually did great things.
“Imagine the possibilities waiting in those big, beautiful stars if we dare to dream big.” President Trump urged. “And that’s what our country is doing again: We’re dreaming big.”
The media is pretending that Obama had some sort of space exploration plan that Trump scrapped.
He didn’t. Take it from the first man to walk on the moon.
“With regard to President Obama's 2010 plan, I have yet to find a person in NASA, the Defense Department, the Air Force, the National Academies, industry, or academia that had any knowledge of the plan prior to its announcement,” Neil Armstrong wrote. "I believe the President was poorly advised.”
That’s an understatement.
The media has been touting Obama’s asteroid nonsense. The National Research Council found that the plan wasn’t even generally accepted within NASA. “The 2011 NASA strategic plan and associated documents do not, in our view, constitute a strategy,” study chairman Albert Carnesale had said.
There is a strategy now. It doesn’t involve Muslim self-esteem or making Al Gore even richer. Nor is it about disposable missions that don’t do anything except keep agencies and contractors in business. Instead it reboots the Republican plan of building a sustainable pathway to the stars by returning to the moon. If Obama hadn’t trashed it for Muslim self-esteem, 2015 would have seen our first lunar mission.
The destruction of our space program was one of the wounds that Obama and his cronies inflicted on the nation. President Trump’s space directive intends to heal another of them by rebuilding American greatness. But what has crippled our ability to move forward is that plans for space exploration have to be carried out over longer terms than that of any single occupant of the White House.
While space exploration is most associated with President Kennedy, the radicalization of his political party has made the heroic idea of Americans setting foot on another world much less popular with his Democrat successors. The manned journeys of the Space Exploration Initiative of the first Bush administration were replaced by Bill Clinton with probes. Clinton’s new "faster, better, cheaper" NASA proved to be none of the above. History repeated itself with Obama torpedoing Bush’s plans.
Clinton and Obama just didn’t see manned space exploration as something worth funding. Obama was far more interested in Muslim self-esteem than in a human presence across the solar system. If another Democrat succeeds Trump, the odds are good that he or she will do the same thing.
But unlike some of his predecessors, Trump isn’t waiting for years before tackling space policy. And Pence’s presence ensures that there will be a vocal advocate for the space program in the White House. The earlier you start a program, the more time it has to develop momentum and win support from interests in Congress. And that makes it harder to kill. That’s why, despite his best efforts, Obama wasn’t able to fully kill Constellation. The earlier Trump starts implementing his vision, the more momentum it will have and the harder it will be for the Obamas and Clintons of tomorrow to stop our space program.
The Democrats are expected to fight Trump’s nomination of Rep. Bridenstine to head NASA for partisan reasons. At Bridenstine’s hearing, Senate Democrats showed no interest in discussing space policy. Instead they wanted to pound their pulpits about global warming, Muslim self-esteem and gay marriage.
"So if you're NASA administrator, and someone asks you questions about sexual morality, you're going to stay consistent with your past statements on how you view same-sex couples raising children?" Senator Cory Booker bizarrely asked.
Senator Patty Murray announced that she would vote against the former Navy pilot because of his appearances at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and other “anti-Muslim groups”. For Murray, Muslim self-esteem is apparently still central to NASA’s mission.
Booker and Murray demonstrate the Dem unseriousness and disinterest in space exploration. Why bother going to the stars when you can wallow in the sewer of intersectional identity politics instead.
Democrats have claimed that anyone who doesn’t believe that the Flying Global Warming Monster is sending storms to punish us for not sending enough money to Al Gore’s carbon credit schemes can’t work at NASA.
But Schmitt, the last living man to walk on the moon, has made it clear that he doesn’t believe it.
President Trump is rebuilding NASA as an agency of human space exploration while discarding the post-modernist angst about human industrial progress that powers pseudoscientific myths about ‘Global Warming’. A new age of American confidence is discarding these insecurities about our purpose and place in the universe. It’s replacing them with purpose, vision and meaning.
The leftward tilt of the Democrats has convinced them that this nation’s founding, our technological achievements and our entire civilization, are tragic mistakes, if not outright crimes. It’s no wonder that ideologues who don’t believe in America, also don’t believe in Americans traveling to other worlds.
But there are still Americans in this country. And their vision goes beyond adding another letter to the LGBTQIA alphabet, another microaggression grievance and another angry protest against America.
"After braving the vast unknown and discovering the new world, our forefathers did not only merely sail home," President Trump said. "They stayed, they explored, they built, they guided, and through that pioneering spirit, they imagined all of the possibilities that few dared to dream. Today, the same spirit beckons us to begin new journeys of exploration and discovery, to lift our eyes all the way up to the heavens."
Comments
How DARE Obama give the head of NASA orders to make Muslims "feel good about their historic contribution to science.”
ReplyDeleteThe more I learn about what this man did to injure our great Country, the more I want to see EVERYTHING he did DISMANTLED!!!
A great piece. It is crazy to me just how NASA was so abused under Obama. I'd like to see President Trump give them a date to aim for. Moon base by 2022 or something. Force them to push. I bet they could do it. Don't give them time to bloat it up with crap.
ReplyDeleteJust for purposes of clarification, Harrison Schmitt is not the last living man to walk on the moon -- he is the last remaining living crew member of Apollo 17. There are six of the twelve currently still living:
ReplyDeleteBuzz Aldrin (Apollo 11)
Alan Bean (Apollo 12)
David Scott (Apollo 15)
John Young (Apollo 16)
Charles Duke (Apollo 16)
Harrison Schmitt (Apollo 17)
Meanwhile Russia and China were developing their capacity to exploit space militarily.
ReplyDeleteI guess Obama and the MSM were waiting for all those Africans and Syrians invading Europe by invitation to land a probe on Pluto. And also create a new method of open heart surgery, endorse free markets, annotate John Locke, and discover the lost works of Aristotle. They didn’t cross the Mediterranean in leaky boats just to scam the European welfare tit, rape whites, and beat up European soy boys. They came to assimilate, and adopt Western norms. Right? They want to work on the exploration on the European mapping of Titan. They want to introduce the great Congolese culture into Europe. Never mind the savagery of a "few." Right? What a laugh, and a tragedy. You can only hope that the real Germans, French, Swedes move to Russia or revolt and invade the gated communities of the elite and have a hanging fest.
ReplyDeleteMAGA
ReplyDeleteCan't we at least send the radical Muslim leaders into space for good, somewhere between the star and the crescent?
ReplyDeleteGeneral Bolden was an AA special. Why would anyone be surprised at his performance?
ReplyDeleteIt is also worth noting the similarities between NASA's Goldin era and its Bolden era. Two of the most incompetent leaders ever. But then both DID do exactly what their pResident wanted...
Schmitt was the last living man, chronologically, to walk on the moon.
ReplyDelete"One Giant Step for ... Islam" ? NOT
ReplyDeleteIt would have benefited the authors argument more if he would have given detailed reasons how it would benefit America by our continuing space exploration instead of making it into an adolescent fight between the left and rights self esteem. I personally believe the president and the country would be better served if the Congress concentrated on the infrastructure problem within the country rather than a road to outer space. If you must you can view a "Star Wars" barroom scene simply by watching the participants of the left and right quarrel without leaving earth.
ReplyDeleteNixon deserves a bit of criticism too. He was the one to cut up the last Saturn V rockets and cancel the NERVA nuclear rocket engine program.
ReplyDeleteAs a reminder, it will require a nuclear rocket to get the astronauts to Mars and back fast enough to avoid overexposure to cosmic rays.
As to Chairman Mao's comment above, it seems the progressives are the ones refusing to discuss the pros and cons of a manned space effort. Instead they seem to first demand genuflection to the current SJW idols.
@Whitehall:
ReplyDeleteCute with the adolescent put down of my name but like your response not very intelligent. I suggest you Google it to find the meaning behind it.
It's your administration now. You have the majority in both houses of Congress and don't need to convince the left. However let me spell it out for you again son. Daniel could have made a much better case for further space exploration than simply relying on the outrage of the low information voters of the right have for the low information voters of the left. While it worked for Trump during the 2016 election it is an insult to anyone's intelligence and taking the lazy way to make a case. But then again the 2016 election didn't require intelligence from either party.
I’ve worked at NASA since 2009. This is a good read and speaks truth to what I’ve witnessed. This diversity and integration bs has been a tough pill to swallow. We are infested with social justice climate change warriors pajama boys and she-men. Ya, I’m surrounded by NASSHOLES.
ReplyDeleteGiving a goal for NASA is a start, but they also need to get rid of all the deadweight and bring back the "Steely eyed Missile men" that used to populate the agency.
ReplyDeleteMrGarabaldi, that's true.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteThank you. That's good to hear (and bad to hear) at the same time.
To respond better to DD Mao, he makes an utterly vacuous argument.
ReplyDeleteWhy spend money on space when we could spend it in infrastructure? Why spend money on sports when we could spend it on infrastructure? On art? Music? Fashion? Monuments? Cable TV? Look at all the money we waste.
No, there is not a "practical" reason to send humans to the moon. It is silly to even suggest it. There are no practical reasons to send probes anywhere in the solar system. Pictures of Pluto are cool, but that doesn't decrease the amtrack travel time between New York and Washington by even one minute. There is no purpose to the CERN collider, or observatories. Much of the research we fund has no practical purpose at all.
There is an emotional, patriotic, inspirational, learning, and entertainment value beyond measure. As JFK said, we don't do it because it is easy, we do it because it is hard. Like climbing mountains. We do hard things to push out limits. We push our limits to get better at doing things.
Your thinking is exactly the thinking of Obama - unless this space program serves leftist obsessions like Muslim engagement and global warming, what use is it? It is exactly how they viewed every single federal program - how can this be bent to their will, their vision, their future?
They own the future after all. Just ask them. In their future there is no room for anything but what serves their vision. The vision of the anointed.
Politically a moon landing is perfectly neutral. It might make some Americans more patriotic, give them a brief lift, but so does a low pass by jets over a football stadium, at a fraction of the cost. But to leftists it is anathema. Because anything that doesn't serve the vision is a waste.
David's point here is how small leftists are. How petty. Nothing escapes them.
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