Obama Buries The Legacy Of John Kennedy

John Kennedy cut taxes across the boards with the statement "a rising tide raises all boats." Obama is still lying through his teeth about raising taxes, so we'll let that one slide for a later post. But another major landmark in the JFK administration was the space program and the creation of NASA. Obama is essentially killing the space program for the foreseeable future. He's leaving the field for the Russians and the Chinese. JFK must be rolling over in his grave.

JFK proposed the New Frontier. Republican critics at the time made a joke about it. They said that the Democratic party had a left ear, a right ear, and now a new front ear. That new front ear was the space program, and Obama is planning to have it surgically removed. Years after JFK, George Bush II was able to turn the tables on the Democrats by parodying his opponent Al Gore as being stuck on earth thinking that the space program was "a risky rocket scheme." Obama actually got elected, so he's going to get rid of that risky rocket scheme, and leave the field entirely to the Russians and Chinese. John Kennedy must be rolling over in his grave.

The picture shown is the Mercury capsule that put John Glenn into orbit, and which occurred a little over two years after Kennedy's inaugural address in which he said "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win . . . ."

When was the last time you heard something like that from a Democrat? Do something important because it's hard. "Challenge" that will be accepted. And that bane of modern Democrats, "one which we intend to win." Kennedy also said "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world." And: " Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Compare that to Obama's hopey-change and greeting our enemies with an open hand if only they will unclench their fists.

The earliest Mercury flights occurred before Kennedy became president, but they were either unmanned or the occupant was a monkey. The earlier launch vehicles were not yet powerful enough to put a man into orbit. But in May of 1961, the improved Redstone-3 launch rocket put Alan Shepard into sub-orbit. I remember it clearly, because our high school played the radio broadcast over the loud-speakers in each of the classrooms. Sadly, JFK did not live to see his goal achieved, but I can't help believing that somewhere he heard the message "that's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."

Now the profligate Obama is going to save money by ending all manned space programs conducted by Americans. Most of us agree that we've done what needed to be done with the space shuttle, and it was time for newer, better ways of getting to our satellites, space operations, and eventually the moon again. But what Obama is proposing is the complete abandonment of any method of reaching the space labs and manned satellites without having to ask nicely of the Russians (and soon, the Chinese) if we can hop aboard one of their vehicles, please. He covers it all up with the grandiose plans of sending a man to Mars. Those plans are decades in the future, and without constant development of intermediate vehicles the trip to Mars will be too impractical, too expensive, and technically unfeasible. So like much of what Obama has accomplished so far, this will put the far greater burden on our children and grandchildren, if they survive the loss of American power and know-how.

The NASA programs have been expensive, and occasionally catastrophic, but well worth it in the end. If you think that all that money was spent with no gain, think of just one product of the "space age." That computer you're sitting in front of came largely out of developments needed for better and better and ever-shrinking computers to control space vehicles. Color television was already underway, but advanced rapidly largely in response to demands for improved pictures from the space vehicles and from the moon. Compare the fluttering and sputtering "ghost images" of Neil Armstrong with those of later moon landings.

Obama has the nerve that only a facile liar could have in saying that we should love the new idea because the programs of the future will be almost exclusively private enterprise. Oh, horse manure. First of all, NASA is one of those rare blendings of government and private enterprise that worked extremely well. But since it had a military aspect to it, the horrendous products liability, environmental "protections," and personal liability rules of civilian law don't generally apply. Military men and women are willing to take risks that they would not be allowed to take in the purely private sector. And because government is part of the formula, it is one of those rare instances in which private enterprise would probably find the whole thing to be just too expensive, but government could afford it (at least before Obamacrats began to finish the race to insolvency that has been going on for years). With government funding and private capital along with non-governmental civilian control of the purse, the Mars trip would be affordable and doable if the space program were continued in the interim.

If Obama's proposed cuts to the space program go into effect as planned, the next time an astronaut wants to make a correction to the Hubble Space Telescope, he'll have to ask Comrade Boris or Comrade Ming if he can hitch a ride on one of their vehicles. Their first question will be "can you afford it?"