Call To Retreat

clipped from drsanity.blogspot.com At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA was consuming almost 4 percent of the federal budget, which in terms of the 2011 budget is about $150 billion. Today the manned space program will die for want of $3 billion a year -- 1/300th of last year's stimulus package with its endless make-work projects that will leave not a trace on the national consciousness. As for President Obama's commitment to beyond-lunar space: Has he given a single speech, devoted an iota of political capital to it? Obama's NASA budget perfectly captures the difference in spirit between Kennedy's liberalism and Obama's. Kennedy's was an expansive, bold, outward-looking summons. Obama's is a constricted, inward-looking call to retreat. Fifty years ago, Kennedy opened the New Frontier. Obama has just shut it. Read it all. Mediocrity and incompetence has so far been the hallmark of the messiah of 'hope and change'.