Is the Space Program on a Final Downward Spiral?
by Ian Mosley
Could the half-century old determination of the U.S.A. to conquer space, the resolve made in the wake of the launching of the first Sputnik in the 1950s, be finally drawing to a close? With little fanfare, it looks as if the powers that be have begun what will eventually be the final dismantling of NASA.
According to the Associated Press: “More than 8,000 NASA contractor jobs in the nation’s manned space program could be eliminated after the space shuttle program is shut down in 2010, the agency said Tuesday. The number of civil servants is expected to remain roughly the same, but dramatic job cuts are possible among private contractors as NASA transitions to the Constellation program, which is developing the next-generation vehicle and rockets to go to the moon and later to Mars. Constellation isn’t scheduled to begin flights until 2015.”
In the aerospace world the most experienced engineers are often the contract engineers. If they are laid off, that will wipe out most of the talent while leaving mostly paper pushers and quota-hires. The remaining few good engineers will be badly outnumbered and their decisions are often vetoed by managers, who know nothing about engineering.
If the space shuttle is going to be shut down in 2010 and the replacement vehicle isn’t due until 2015, that means a minimum of five years with no US manned space flight –and we all know the replacement vehicle will be two or three years late, easily making it eight long years. We will have to rely on the Russians to send astronauts to the Space Station (assuming that we don’t cancel that too). Not only have we lost the ability to send men to the moon, we can’t send anyone into low earth orbit. We are following in the footsteps of Egypt, whose advanced culture was wiped out by race-mixing with African slaves, permanently reducing Egypt to a Third World status. In America’s case, Whites haven’t been race-mixed out of existence yet, but our politicians are willing to take a huge amount of taxpayer money and throw it into the black hole which is the endless financial demands of the Latinos and Blacks.
The proposed NASA program to return to the moon seems hopeless given the coming depression and the collapse of American society generally due to the end of cheap energy, the subprime crisis and the burden of 100 million Third World people in the US.
The AP article goes on: “NASA acknowledged job losses could fluctuate depending on who’s occupying the White House next year and their support for space exploration. The bleakest forecast was issued for the flagship Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., where just 1,600 to 2,300 employees were expected to remain in 2011, a cut of up to 80 percent from its current 8,000 workers. The Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans was forecast to lose as many as 1,300 of its 1,900 jobs.”
And we all know just how much a black politician from the South Side of Chicago will be interested in space travel. He’ll take one look at the space program, notice that it’s 99 percent White and Asian high tech workers and then pull the plug. The bureaucrats are staying and the highly skilled technical people, mostly white, who were never even hired on as salaried with medical benefits but used as “contractors,” will be kicked out the door, thus crippling the essential function of the agency.
The loss of official interest in space travel has been ongoing for almost a generation now. Politicians want to buy votes and they would rather give out food stamps and AIDS medicine than maintain a high tech program. Never mind the fact that the Apollo moon project produced a myriad of spin off technologies including the portable computer, which has kept the US prosperous for decades.
Our modern politicians don’t understand or appreciate the importance of high technology (except perhaps as pork barrel projects). A black president seems certain to increase aid to the poor, which tends to produce nothing, but more poor people. We already have 100 million non-Whites in America. We don’t need the immigration doors thrown open to all of Central America, not to mention 900 million sub-Saharan Africans, but it looks like that’s where America will be after the 2008 election.