Goodbye, Moon

Goodbye, heavy-lift rockets, as the Obama Administration is planning to cancel the Ares, Orion and Constellation programs. Goodbye, manned space program. Goodbye, Mars.

"Short-sighted" does not even begin to cover it. Which is no surprise, as the Bush Obama Administration has opted to cancel ongoing projects in favor of more study about a more advanced vehicle, the cost of which will be paid somewhere in the future (like after 2016).

So not only has Obama adopted the national security and economic policies of George W. Bush, now he has adopted the same method of space exploration- Study, Design and Delay. If either one of those two men had been King of Spain, they'd still be mulling over whether to send an exploratory mission to the Western Hemisphere.

Sometime in the last 50 years, our national appetite for exploration was sated and our national tolerance for risk was drastically reduced. We have become a fearful, petty people. Our ancestors, who founded this country and who expanded it from a narrow strip of land to "from sea to shining sea" would be deeply ashamed. We are now like the folks in old Europe who said: "America? That's too far, I'm happy just being a peasant in this disease-ridden village."

As a nation, we are fucking pathetic.