Motherboard

Excelsior! We’re (Not) Going to the Moon! Excelsior!

Tonight at his State of the Union address and next Monday, when President Obama unveils his 2010 budget proposal, all expectations are that our great dimming hope will effectively bend over in every way imaginable to right wing screeching. The major right-hook-to-progress being discussed is an across the board spending freeze for non-essential federal spending, basically taking the last bit of wind out of the Obama apolgists’ sails. Kinda like how George HW Bush bent over in 2006 when the Democrats regained a Congressional majority. Oh, wait.

But looks like there is, however, one bright spot. Bush Jr.’s interplanetary hard-on will be effectively squashed in the new budget, according to The Orlando Sentinel. No money is to be allocated for the Constellation program, a Bush Jr. relic that had plans to put humans back on the Moon by 2020—to, you know, snap some more pics for the Chinese or something. This means that both the Ares I rocket and the Ares V will be scrapped as well, in favor of more practical, forward-looking Wide Load kinda spacecraft.

Oddly enough, the new plan actually ducks the right hook, and NASA will get $200 to $300 million dollars additional in the new budget proposal. So it represents more a shift in priorities within science, not away from science. A focus that should see some extra scrill is climate-change research, and also extending the life of the International Space Station. And I love the idea of skipping around on other planets (or moons) as much as the next stargazer, but in the meantime, a Moon Bounce will be just fine. It’d suck to gaze down on an Earth minus icecaps.

“You dig 50 pounds of moon rock and what do you get? Another day older, and deeper in debt.”

- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., “Excelsior! We’re Going to the Moon! Excelsior!” The New York Times Magazine, 1969