By David Ross. President Obama’s hostility to NASA has now become a subject of wide comment, and for good reason. It reveals, perhaps more than anything else, his resentment of everything that implies heroic possibility (the military, capitalism, Israel, etc.). The heroic quest to expand knowledge – to enrich consciousness – has nothing to do with his mindset or task, which remains that of the leftwing community organizer. Harold Bloom uses the phrase ‘school of resentment’ to describe the academic enemies of Shakespeare. In my opinion, the same psychopathology explains the enemies of NASA. This ‘resentment’ is directed against anything that suggests human beings transcend their social, economic, and biological context, and that they are irreducible to a formula of animal needs. Robert Zubrin, who has for decades lobbied for a mission to Mars as head of the Mars Society, makes precisely my own point in the June issue of Commentary (subscriber only):
The values championed by the Obama administration are comfort, security, protection, and dependence. But the frontier sings to our souls with different ideals, telling stirring tales of courage, risk, initiative, inventiveness, independence, and self-reliance. Considered as a make-work bureaucracy, NASA may be perfectly acceptable to those currently in power. But for mentalities that would criminalize the failure to buy health insurance, the notion of a government agency that celebrates the pioneer ethos by risking its crews on daring voyages of exploration across vast distances to terra incognita can only be repellent.
In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, NASA administrator Charles Bolden illustrates the extent of the Obama administration’s departure from the “right stuff.” Bolden told Al Jazeera:
When I became the NASA administrator, [President Obama] charged me with three things. One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.
You can view the entire interview here. The Al Jazeera pundit deserves credit, by the way. Undistracted by a thrill running up his leg, he asks some pointed, well-targeted questions.
Let me recommend, as antidote, restorative, and palette cleanser, the superb documentary For All Mankind (1989), which tells the story of the moon landing, or rather lets the raw footage of this transcendent achievement tell its own story. This film is a definitive retort to the Obama-Bolden conception of the NASA non-mission, and a crucial reminder of our endangered tradition of heroic aspiration. Let me also recommend the George Pal-produced, Heinlein-scripted Destination Moon (1950), a technically scrupulous B-flick that demonstrates what it means to imagine the future.
Posted on July 9th, 2010 at 10:06am.
Well put David. Liberals always claim they are the “intellectuals” who support science etc., so why don’t they support NASA? It’s just crazy. Of course, if you spend years attacking Columbus and the explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries the way the left has, I guess you would also have issues with sending American explorers to other planets (i.e., it’s wicked and imperialistic of us, sending people who might be “colonists” to innocent “Third World” planets like Mars that are undeveloped, etc.).
As even a blind pig can find some corn once in a while, Obama’s shut down of the pork barrel Constellation program, the heavy lifter and the hugely expensive and late Ares rocket are about the only things I agree with that he’s done so far.
Yes, decades ago, NASA led a mission to put men on the moon and accomplished their goal of beating the Soviets there. That was then, this is now. Now NASA is, as Mr. Zubin notes, a make work bureaucracy that lives off it’s PR.
The argument for getting the government out of the space cargo infrastructure is well put by Rand Simberg here:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-path-not-taken
I would suggest anyone interested in the subject give it a read. If NASA had run the transcontinental rail road, the United States would still lie east of the Mississippi. .
“In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, NASA administrator Charles Bolden illustrates the extent of the Obama administration’s departure from the “right stuff.” Bolden told Al Jazeera:
When I became the NASA administrator, [President Obama] charged me with three things. One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.”
This is the absolute money quote for the bass-ackward thinking of Obama and the Democrats. Now NASA is supposed to be about making Muslim nations feel better about themselves in math and science, and not space exploration? Huh? Why can’t the Muslim nations make themselves feel better about math and science by educating their people better and achieving more? Why is does this now have to be done by NASA and the American taxpayer?
Today seems to have an outer space theme! I like it.
However, I don’t understand how Hollywood can make all these sci-fi films, and yet give money to Democrats like Obama who want to gut the space program.
i would tolerate O.’s inactivity on the space front if he could clean up the friggin spill.
Don’t hold your breath.
Great article David. Two date that hopefully a majority of Americans and I are looking forward to are November 2, 2010 and in particular November 6, 2012!