Rick Raw: Moon or Mars Debate Underscores NASA’s Impotence–The Space Race Drove the Moon Landing Initiative 40 Years Ago

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net www.rickatnight.com

During the 1960s, America’s space program was propelled by the fear that Russia would get to the moon first or establish satellites with nuclear missiles pointing down on America. President Kennedy resolved that would never happen.

Thus, the "Space Race" began. America was willing and able to spend any amount of money to beat the Russians in technology and to the moon by 1969. This fear driven space race initiative fueled the entire space program.

Thousands of engineers and scientists were hired by aerospace companies nationwide, including me. The brightest minds in America were concentrated on achieving a manned space mission to the moon, as Kennedy said, "Not because it was easy, but because it was hard." But he didn’t say was," we’ll beat those godless Russians to the moon no matter what we have to do."

The cold war paranoia of Soviet aggression created the motivatioin to advance technology in that short span of time to achieve our moon mission. Incredibly, that was 40 years ago, and the best we could do since then was build the lumbering beast called the Space Shuttle–a big rocket truck to haul supplies to the International Space Station. We could have skipped that whole program and launched the Mars initiative with the money spent on the Space Shuttle program.

However, now there is no driving force to get the money from our lawmakers on the Hill. We are drowning in red ink funding the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our national debt is over 11 trillion dollars. More importantly, there is no strong will to have a big thriving space program, given all our other domestic problems demanding our time and money.

Imagine if alien beings landed across the globe in their giant starships and made demands on our freedoms, you can bet that our government would be throwing money at every new technology to fight them.

Ah yes, astronauts who were involved with Project Apollo (the moon landing initiative) are nostalgic about the cold war, which enabled them to go into space. We need an enemy to justify spending large amounts of money on space exploration.

Today, there is a debate among NASA officials over whether we should go back to the moon or mars? The first man on the moon, Neil Amstrong and his partner Buzz Aldrin (the second man on the moon) are advising NASA to nix the moon mission and concentrate on a manned Mars mission.

Aldrin said that we’ve been to the moon 40 years ago, (been there, done that). it’s time to explore Mars. Aldrin has been an especially outspoken supporter of following "Star Trek’s" motto: "To boldy go where no man has gone before."

Yes, "space is the final frontier" and NASA is weak and impotent since its funding has slowly dried up over the years. But it’s important to move forward with exciting new adventures into space.

The research into these high-tech adventures leads to new scientific discoveries that ultimately enhance our lives here on earth. In a few years, the Shuttle Program will end and new technologies like the Space Plane, which uses a new form of propulsion called the pulse jet can take off fly outside the Earth’s atmosphere then land under power back at Cape Kennedy.

The International Space Station can be used as a launching base for future space missions to Mars and beyond. Ah yes, but who will pay for it. America is broke and deeply in debt. But we can still dream. Perhaps we can encourage Russia to rise up to its old Cold War glory and once again threaten our freedom, thus driving us to beat them at all costs.

Our new motto: Bring back the Cold War and the Soviet threat. Then the old phrase: We must beat the Russians into deep space would inspire a new space race. It’s our only chance.