Letter to the Editor: The End of U.S. Leadership in Space Exploration?

Last week the last shuttle was launched in to space and when it lands, for a while at least, the once greatest space faring nation on the planet will be grounded for manned space flights. Oh we can hitch a ride with the Russians. If we beg we might catch a ride with the Chinese. Even Iran is heading rapidly towards manned space flight if not an ICBM to blast us even faster in to the stone-age than Obama's economic follies.

I was at the launch of a man to the moon while a college student. I aspired to be an astronaut while a pilot in the US Air Force and had made progress towards that goal when Democrats gutted the military shuttle program to pay for more welfare programs. I left the Air Force to go fly commercial jets and make a lot of money and have a lot of fun and time off. But I would have given all of that up to fly in space.

When we sent the first men to the moon I had actually snuck in to the launch area with a college girl friend and almost got caught. No evil intent, just a youthful error in judgment to be close to history in the making. I still have the 8 mm movies and reel to reel sound track to prove it. I am not sure I have ever been more proud to be an American than then and when Neil Armstrong stepped on to the moon a few days later. 

In my youthful exuberance and inexperience with government waste and socialism I assumed that I would likely get to the moon one day, and that as a nation we would have research outposts there and on Mars and on a few other planetary moons by now. Never in my wildest imagination could I have anticipated that we would just give up flying men in to space because we went broke funding Socialist programs.

Yes I know this is supposed to be a temporary grounding and Socialist Security was supposed to have money in accounts to pay back all that money people paid in. Sadly I do not believe that, or anything else our government says now. I hope future plans for space are true. But this nation has declined so far so fast in the last two years that it is difficult to see how we will get back in to space soon. 

The myriad of social programs, the list of  "entitlements" for even illegal aliens, and the unprecedented debt burden from useless unproductive government government "stimulus programs", seem too much of a burden for anything so out of this world as manned space flight. One might remember that while it was Spain who sent the first European ships to explore the new world of 1492, it was England and a few other nations that quickly became the leaders in exploration and became the new empires as a result. We may have been the first to the moon, but in manned space flight we have been stuck in near earth orbit ever since, as other countries build to go there. Obama, Al Gore and the Democrat Cabal all believe we are too wealthy and use too much of the world resources and that we must live with much less. The UN said recently that anything over a $10,000.00 income was excessive! Is that the change you voted for?

I will not say anything so damning as Michelle Obama's statements of being ashamed of our nation. I am just sad and angry that her husband has so badly harmed it by destroying our economy, our currency, our job market, and our pride and moral.  He has even threatened our future by putting so many trained and brilliant people from NASA on the street which will add to the 9.2% unemployment reported last that he has caused. But Obama is an expert at destroying jobs and hope. He is seeking to spend us in to even more debt by raising the debt limit. I love our country and I desperately want to get it back, then one day we will have that base on the moon and Mars and then on to the stars. For now we are grounded and stuck here in a leaderless Marxist morass.

David R. Kraner
Manatee County

Send your letters to the editor to letters@thebradentontimes.com