The morning of April 17, on the tarmac at Reagan National Airport: The Delta (DAL) shuttle to LaGuardia appeared to be No. 287 in line for takeoff. The plane was full, mainly with purposeful-looking middle-aged men in quality suits, fully absorbed in whatever it is that absorbs them.
Suddenly, a commotion: All at once, the passengers contorted themselves to get a view out of the starboard windows.
And there it was. The actual shuttle, the space shuttle Discovery, piggybacking a ride atop a Boeing 747, on the way to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, where it would be retired. A ripple of excitement — boyish, unvarnished excitement — moved through the cabin.
It was an entrancing sight, and completely improbable, especially to people like me, who still don’t quite understand how a 747 gets into the air, even without a space shuttle as carry-on luggage.
The 747 and the space shuttle made a pass over theWashington Monument and the capital’s other grand marble temples, all consecrated to the American idea. They gleamed in the sun as they received a salute from a spacecraft that represented the physical manifestation of American ingenuity and confidence.
Then the 747 left our view. We settled back into our seats, having been elevated for a moment by a magnificent and elegiac vision — elegiac, because the end of the shuttle program marks the first time since the dawn of the Space Age that the U.S. government has no immediate plan to launch humans into space.
American Decline
A few minutes later, while we were still parked on the tarmac, the pilot spoke to us over the public-address system. He said, in that laconic voice pilots use when they have bad news to report, that the plane’s steering seemed to be malfunctioning. We’d be returning to the terminal. If necessary, he continued, someone with Delta could help us book a later flight.
This posed a problem for me. I was due to moderate a panel at the New York Ideas Forum in a few hours. The topic our panel was supposed to address: Is America in decline?
We returned to the terminal, and I watched on CNN as Discovery finished the journey to its nursing home in the Virginia countryside. Only then did the obvious thought cross my mind: Newt is right.
This isn’t a thought that has often crossed my mind, especially over the past several months, but on the matter of space exploration and the role it has played in teaching Americans that they are capable of performing exceptional acts of creativity and bravery, Newt Gingrich is exactly right.
So I called him and told him so. He is, from what I’m told, still busy running for president. But he seemed happy to talk about space and the terrible mistake the Obama administration made by canceling the Constellation program, which was meant to get Americans back to the moon.
Gingrich was particularly keen to talk about his Republican rivals, who had savaged him during a debate in Florida for proposing that the U.S. — mainly with private funding — establish a colony on the moon.
This is what Mitt Romney said at the time: “If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, ‘You’re fired.’ The idea that corporate America wants to go off to the moon and build a colony there, it may be a big idea, but it’s not a good idea.”
The small-minded Rick Santorum piled on, saying, “Let’s just be honest, we run a $1.2 trillion deficit right now … and to go out there and promise new programs and big ideas, that’s a great thing to maybe get votes, but it’s not a responsible thing.”
New Worlds
Gingrich told me he was “shocked that night” by Romney and Santorum. “If I had been clever, I would have said to Romney, ‘You would have fired Christopher Columbus and John F. Kennedybecause they were proposing daring and large things. They were proposing to go out and discover entire new worlds, and they did.’”
He believes that human settlements on the moon, or on Mars, are inevitable. “I can tell you flatly that there will be a human colony on the moon,” he said. “It may be Chinese, but there will be a colony on the moon. Anyone who watches the Chinese space program and doesn’t think we’re facing a competitor is foolish.”
You can argue until you’re blue in the face that the space program is a great thing, but the fact remains that it’s ultimately an optional budget item and thus irresponsible while running trillion dollar deficits. If Gingrich had a balanced budget that included money for a moon base (or even one that ran deficits at a sustainable level), I could accept his argument. As it stands, it’s magical thinking. It doesn’t matter how nice something is if you can’t pay for it.
CURT
thank you for that, IT was good of NEWT GINGRICH to send a thought of the possibility for AMERICANS TO RISE UP ABOVE THE POSSIBLE AND THINK OF THE DREAM AGAIN THAT AMERICA HAS NO LIMIT IN MAKING DREAM COME THROUGH AGAIN, IT WAS A SPIRIT SHOCK, LIKE YOU SHAKE A PERSON WHICH HAS BECOME SO MEDIOCRE AS TO HAVE LOST HIS SPIRIT TO CREATE FROM HIS OWN MIND POWER,TODAY IT IS REPLACE BY all kind of drugs ingested or smoked or chewed or shooted intravenous ,giving the human a ride into the unreal world, and they awake feeling weird, loosing progressingly some mind power each time they repeat the process, and they haven’t accomplish nothing, why should they, they say nothing is worth it, the time of do nothing, the generation of do nothing, need a shock, a big shock to get them back where they where in
AMERICA LOST THESES LAST YEARS.
YES NEWT WAS RIGHT TO SAY IT,
I think this is one case where spending tax money would be an actual “investment”, although I would prefer it to be done with private capitol. There are those guys in the news recently planning to do asteroid mining. Think about the worth of a mile wide chunk of solid nickel-iron, and that’s just a small one.
Newt Gingrich: An encyclopedia of trivia.
WHAT COME TO MIND AT THIS TIME,
is about the migration of the birds coming north and interrupted by
the sucking engines of the planes, it’s another subject but it is about SPACE REALITY,
WE MUST PROTECT THE SPRING AND FALL MIGRATIONS OF MILLIONS OF BIRDS, WE HAVE A RESPONSABILITY TO DO IT, BECAUSE WE ARE THE ONE GETTING IN THEIR ROAD OF SURVIVAL,
is in it a way, to do it, how about flying higher in theses times over the birds route, or decrease the flights, or change the sucking part of the plane PUT IT IN THE BACK INSTEAD, how about screen no it would flatten the birds instead of sucking them killing them as well. how about some radar study of their time and route before the flock arrive
and delay the flight, how about experts doing their jobs for the BIRD’S SAKE THIS TIME,
HOW ABOUT TELLING HUMAN WHAT LIFE WOULD BE WITHOUT BIRDS,
SOME KIND OF APOCALYPSE IN A SLOWER AND UNPRECEDENT WAY OF DYING,
AFTER THE BIRDS ARE GONE, THE UNTHINKEBLE WILL BE REALITY.
JOHN COOPER YOU ARE ENGINEER WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE,
We seem to forget all the benefits we reaped due to the space program.
If NASA is such a great idea, how come it can only exists by fleecing the US Taxpayers?????
No “Republican” can seem to answer that question.
Take the government money away from NASA and it will fold up like a house of cards. Gone. Good-bye.
I’d say we got a good return on our investment (for once).
http://thehill.com/special-reports/technology-july-2009/50201-numerous-benefits-of-space-exploration
http://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/benefits.html
IVAN
before you accuse the REPUBLICAN, at least wait till the after NOVEMBER when they will be in power,
right now is not BUSH FAULT ,but only the DEMOCRAT’S FAULT along with OBAMA’S FAULT.
you then will find some critic words as you always do.
@ilovebeeswarzone:
I despise the Democrats, and the Republicans who don’t fight them.
The Republicans, who control the House, have EXPLODED THE BUDGET even more so than the the Democrats before them.
But you’re okay with that, aren’t you BEEEZZZ.
AREN”T YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??????????????????????????????
IVAN
remember who’s in charge, it’s OBAMA USING HIS POWER
on his executive pen at the tip of his fingers,
and like MITT SAID; JUST WAIT A LITTLE LONGER,
patience IVAN, we are getting there, soon
bye