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The President of Free Space, Part 1, Free Space
"Rational thought, the foundation of science, the reason why there are rovers scratching the sand on Mars today, has been largely absent from the American political scene, and perhaps the American way of life for a long time now. Institutions created to solve specific problems, became incarnated (think FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society) and never went away. That's what NASA is fighting now. Its leaders know the agency needs to dematerialize, shed its expensive and deadly shuttle program, and return to its core roots of space exploration."
Editor's note: And yet despite the occasional, rational reasons for mentioning space in this election, space is getting some play for other reasons: its iconic, inspirational aspects. Hillary Clinton went down the visceral, emotional path when she mentioned the number of female astronauts NASA now has as an indication of how far women had come in our society. And a pre-speech film about Barack Obama showed Apollo footage as he spoke about seeing Apollo astronauts returning home - and his grandfather's suggestion that if Americans can do this - they can do anything.
Alas, despite Obama's grandfather's statement, it is apparently going to take longer for NASA to send humans back to the Moon than it did the first time - and the rocket science seems to be harder this time than it was the first time around.
- and the rocket science seems to be harder this time than it was the first time around.
Well, yes, but back then, they didn't know what they didn't know. Now we know what we don't know. Or as the former secretary of defense once observed, there are known knowns, and known unknowns. And there are unknown knowns. It's the unknown unknowns that hamstring us...
Still, Obama seems sentimental about exploring the Moon, so let's hope if elected he doesn't treat NASA as a dumping ground for disaffected politicos.