Written on Sunday, April 22, 2012 by Tad Cronn
In something reminiscent of a New Orleans funeral, the space shuttle
Discovery — powerless, lifeless, unable to fly on its own — was towed on the
back of a 747 to its final resting place amid great pomp in a Washington, D.C.,
museum, where it will draw generations of children who will never get to see a
space shuttle lumber through the air for a landing, much less zoom into
orbit.
It’s the ultimate symbol of the Obama administration’s failure.
At a time when our economy continues to shake and shrivel, while President
Obama talks about innovation, manufacturing and overcoming challenges, we
mothball possibly the most complex machine ever built.
Instead of turning our eyes toward the solar system outside our front door
and rolling up our sleeves, we put our energy-saving sweaters on and complain
about the cold as we come back inside.
Rather than continue to lead the world in technological and scientific
innovations, we give up the command chair to Russia and China.
Like most things about the Obama administration, its commitment to space
exploration has been all hypocritical talk.
While the president has flapped his gums about getting U.S. astronauts to
land on an asteroid by the mid-2020s, Obama has long since killed the program
that could have gotten us there — a program which, by the way, probably would
have cost less, spurred more business and employed more people than any
government-spawned bailout.
Thus Discovery passes with no heir apparent and our once-daring astronauts
reduced to paying passengers on a Russian or Chinese flight.
The plan once was to build the International Space Station, use it as a
jumping-off point to the moon, then build a lunar base that could serve as a
launch pad for getting men to Mars and possibly beyond.
The plan now, apparently, is to settle in to mediocrity, to abandon
exceptionalism and leadership for a spot among the rest of the herd as we watch
China trample all over the historic footprints we made on the moon.
The first space shuttle ever built was named Enterprise after the famed
ship in “Star Trek.” The name and the famous challenge “to boldly go where no
one has gone before” encapsulated the spirit of the shuttle program, even if the
ships themselves were incapable of going past Earth’s orbit.
But Obama and indeed the entire Left have no stomach for boldness. Theirs
is a philosophy built on fear: Don’t do that, it might make you sick; don’t walk
there, it could be dangerous; don’t use that, it could hurt the environment.
They are emotional and intellectual invalids whose only dreams are of disaster.
Derring-do is fundamentally an act of faith that something can be done because
we can conceive of it.
When in the future children ask what happened to the American Dream, direct
them to Washington where the dream rots in the tomb of
Discovery.
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