[The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, to be precise. --Declan] ------------------------------------------------ Free Congress Foundation's Notable News Now February 10, 2003 The Free Congress Commentary America's Space Program Needs To Recapture The Public's Imagination By Paul M. Weyrich It is hard for those under 50 to appreciate the excitement that President John F. Kennedy generated when he announced the United States would send a man to the moon by the end of the 1960s. It was a bold plan and even though many members of my family were anything but JFK supporters, they gave him credit for making this remarkable effort in the space race with the Soviet Union. That was an era when the space program had overwhelming public support. We hung on the every move of the astronauts of that era. We held our breath until John Glenn, bobbing up and down in the sea, was rescued. Astronauts became greater celebrities among young people than baseball or football players. Even movie stars were hard pressed to compete for the affections of high schoolers. The idea that this country could win the race to the moon was the sort of thing that dreams were made of. And that was the secret of the program. It was truly bold. Space became the new frontier, and cartoons of the day speculated about man going to the planets and beyond. Suddenly that table of the planets in our science books came alive. Contrast that era with this one. Most of us hardly knew the Columbia had lifted off. We sort of heard vaguely that the on-board experiments were going well, but we would be hard pressed to name those experiments. And speaking of names, compared with those days when astronauts were household figures, only die-hard NASA fans could name the seven who went home to the Heavens. Now we know their names, but only because their spacecraft blew apart. The syndicated columnist and television commentator Charles Krauthammer has it exactly right. The reason for the loss of interest in the space program is that its mission is no longer bold. It has been years since we sent anyone to the moon. Where we once spoke of manned exploration of Mars and even Venus, now it is only robots, if anyone, that will go there. The president has said that manned space exploration will continue and on that I am completely with him. After a decade of NASA's funding being cut, the president's budget calls for a $500 million increase. But the space shuttle? Why? To commute to the space station? The space station has utterly failed to capture the imagination of the public. The reason is that its mission is not clear. The president ought to do several things. He ought to pull together some of the best minds involved with space and he ought to reconstitute a major new manned mission, one which will renew the concept of space as the last frontier. Then, the president should appoint a commission aimed at coming up with a plan to privatize the space program. I know the NASA crew is very dedicated and that they believe themselves to be a family. That is commendable but I have never yet seen a federal program that operates better than one run by private business. Of course, the federal government will have to continue to subsidize the space program, at least at first. But there are thousands of people who are willing to pay big money to have a taste of space. Establish a moon colony and you will have people tripping over themselves to live there for a time. Or I have another idea. The British originally set up Australia as a penal colony. They sent a lot of rebellious Irish there to get them off their hands. Perhaps we could do the same thing. Our prisons are overflowing. Some governors are letting non-violent criminals out early. Why not set up a penal colony on the moon and send our prisoners there? They might well set up a model colony and they would not be a menace to those of us on earth. Alternatively, a moon colony might be a training place for establishing a permanent colony on Mars. It is exciting just to think about it. I completely disagree with those who say we should shut down the space program. On the other hand we spend a lot more on space than all the other nations combined. We should spend that money for a noble mission, one which captures the imagination of the people, and one which may have some very beneficial side effects for all of mankind. Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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