On July 20, 1969 10:56 PM EDT, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr. landed on the Moon. The fulfillment of a commitment to human space travel by President John F. Kennedy:
For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the Moon and the Planets beyond.
We Choose to go the Moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that challenge is one we are willing to accept. One we are unwilling to postpone and one we intend to win.
John F. Kennedy 12 September 1962 Rice University
It has been 42 years since the first Moon landing and 49 years since President Kennedy spoke those moving words. Yet recently President Barack Hussein Obama not only cancelled the Constellation program, scrubbing the US return to the Moon and then Mars. And has saddled the US with an enormous cost to send our astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The Russians will do it for $50 million dollars each astronaut.
President Obama claims that his plan will create jobs. He is right. Jobs for Russians, not Americans as the people of NASA will be downsizing and 1/3 of the NASA work force will be out of work tomorrow.
Ironic isn't it. When President Obama first took office he was compared to John Kennedy as the second coming of JFK. I can now paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen with accuracy:
Mr. President, you're no Jack Kennedy!Indeed not! Leadership is not his forte. He has no idea what it is to inspire an nation, to unite a nation, to make us dream.
I was going to make this post one that would look back on the last 30 years of the shuttle program. Instead I have changed this into a harangue against Obama's NASA policy. The typical Progressive policy of destroying those programs that don't give funds directly to his cronies (SEIU).
I will leave you with this last landing ever of the Shuttle:
As the Space Shuttle has pulled into port for the last time, an era has come to an end.
When will America send her best and bravest back into space? How long will it take?