The 2008 Presidential Candidates+NASA's future April 25, 2008
Posted by Nick Azer in : Base Race, Constellation, McCain, Obama , trackbackJust came across a brand-new and interesting article from Popular Mechanics about the stance of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain on NASA and America’s space future.
Providing a roundup of each, Rand Simberg’s analysis ends up with it looking like a McCain presidency in particular could spell delays for NASA (as his plan for reducing the federal deficit includes a potential freeze on all domestic discretionary spending), while Clinton is fairly positive and Obama sounds the most seriously interested in the topic (which is not surprising, considering his style of soaring rhetoric and big dreams), despite his education plan including a bit about cutting back or delaying the Constellation program to pay for education.
With the baby boomer generation retiring and the economy generally in a crunch in the first place, the future of the momentum of the Constellation program looks potentially grim. Of course, the Constellation program is far from the only one out there; both foreign efforts and commercial projects are international enough by their nature to be removed from the woes of America. The Moon can move on without us Americans, in other words, and humanity might not skip much of a beat.
Still, things look pretty good for the American effort. We should at least be a part of the Base Race, though this time, we probably won’t finish first.
You never know, though; there’s still room for the Emperor of the Moon as a dark horse…
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