President-elect Barack Obama plans to significantly cut NASA’s budget to provide more funding for his education plan. His early education plan “will be [partially] paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years.” Obama plans to leave the Constellation program a $500 million/year budget for their “manufacturing and technology base.” Among other consequences, the cuts would delay the introduction of Orion and also delay a space shuttle’s return to Earth.
This is ironic, as Obama insists that one of his main priorities in education reform is to “make math and science education a national priority.” Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz agrees, noting that “Obama’s plan to help our children reach for the stars is financed in part by slashing a program that helps us learn about those very same stars.”
Obama stated that he does have “a strong belief in NASA and the process of space exploration,” yet he expects the Constellation program to run on a mere $500 million/year budget? He further stated, “I do think that our program has been stuck for a while – that the space shuttle mission did not inspire the imagination of the public.”
NASA may appear to have come up with few earth-shattering discoveries recently, but that does not mean it is “stuck.” Discovering new worlds and working to understand our universe is a huge job, impossible to complete. We need to make space exploration a top priority to benefit our planet in the long run. With our planet’s health deteriorating every day, and no cohesive plan to help it, we must look to the universe for solutions. And sorry, Obama, but NASA is not aiming to “inspire the imagination of the public”—the association has been working hard to make discoveries that will advance our civilization and ensure our safety and survival. Investing in education today may benefit our country throughout the next century, but we should constantly be investing in space exploration to benefit the human race for the rest of its life.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2007/11/20/obama-cut-constellation-to-pay-for-education/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/03/02/obama-talks-sense-about-nasa/
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I agree that NASA has been a valuable program in the past, but for the moment we must focus on remaking our own world before we search out any others. After all, there are no other countries with space programs sophisticated enough to pose the kind of threat we assumed the Soviet Union did during the last century. I think we need to lacerate the budget in as many places as possible in order to make room for the economic stimulus we so desperately need. Then, when our economy has recovered, we might begin to think about NASA once more.
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