For those of us of a certain age, we have lived our lives in tune with America in space. We assembled in small elementary school gymansiums and watched the early space launches on small, grainy, black and white televisions and also lauched our own dreams as the rockets ascended. We heard President John F. Kennedy proclaim that “We choose to go to the moon!”, grieved as fire consumed Apollo heroes, held our breath and prayed for the salvation of Apollo 13, and watched in awe from our living rooms as Neil Armstrong took his “giant leap for mankind” as he achieved the impossible: he stepped on the moon.
Armstrong also took the flag of the United States to the moon. The exploration of space and landing on the moon symbolized American greatness. As Americans, we could accomplish that which others could barely imagine. Americans do the impossible.
“Space, The Final Frontier” were the first words at the opening of the 60s television show “Star Trek” that has become iconic. Many of us who measured our lives with the US space program embraced the Star Trek series passionately. It envisioned a day when all humans were engaged in the common mission of space exploration. It gave life to those dreams that took flight with the rockets. But the series also clearly grasped the pioneering spirit that made America great and just extended it into space. Captain James T. Kirk embodied the spirit of America. Kirk let nothing stand in his way. He was a conquerer and pioneer and brought liberty in his path. In the American space program, that unique spirit that brought the first travelers to our shores and carried the leather-clad adventurers over mountain after mountain until Americans stood on the shores of the Pacific, continued on.
President Obama now plans to terminate our exploration of space. He does not state it in those terms, but in ending the Constellation program, he will have eliminated our ability to put Americans in space. The Constellation program has been developing the next generation of space vehicles to replace the Space Shuttle, which will be retired by the end of this year. Without the vehicles to carry Americans into space, we will become dependent upon Russians, Chinese, or perhaps Indians to provide space transportation for American astronauts. Moreover, the mission of NASA will be redirected from exploration of space to the substantiation of climate change theories on Earth.
President Obama’s withdrawal of America from independent space exploration is emblematic of everything wrong with this administration. He reduces us from the nation held in awe by the rest of the world as we conquered the moon to a hitchhiker metaphorically at the corner with our thumb out begging for a ride. He decries our exceptionalism and seems to be doing all that he can to establish that we are no longer great. He apologizes, bows, and constantly diminshes our country. Throughout my entire life I have believed that, as Americans, we could accomplish everything. I held to that faith because, no matter what we faced, I knew that we could conquer it because we conquered space. In so many ways, Barack Obama, the “Hope President”, has been instead a president of disillusion. But in canceling the Constellation, he has done the unforgivable. He has lost the Final Frontier. In so doing, he cuts from our national soul a significant part of that spirit that defines America. He truly has gone where no president has gone before. He makes us common and small.
