Reply #11: No Kidding. And The Right's Been Covering It Up, Too!

[Vogon_Glory]

I'm not a bit surprised that the US has been losing its leadership in space exploration. It's been losing ground for years, even back into the days of the Daddy Bush and Clinton administrations.

The space shuttle has been a flying turkey for years and doesn't do what it was originally supposed to do. The shuttle was meant to be relatively cheap, reusable, have a relatively quick turn-around, and be reliable. It has failed on all but the re-usable count, except that the shuttle tank, and parts of the solid booster rocket, not to mention the tiles, aren't reusable, either.

I think that the shuttle should have been replaced at least a decade ago. Of course, the Republicans (With the possible exception of Reagan) were never that serious about space exploration and the Clinton administration was too preoccupied with its other problems to give NASA the good, hard shaking-up it richly deserves.

We saw what the Republicans did to the shuttle replacement programs during the Clinton years. Both the X-33 and X-38 programs had their funding cut out by Republican-controlled Congresses during the 1990's, after showering hundreds of millions of dollars on aerospace companies without flying anything.

I have argued on other boards that the Republicans can't be trusted with scientific exploration and haven't been trustworthy for years. Most R's can't see beyond 3 miles up (If even that far) and Team Shrub sees the space program only as a backdrop for a photo op.

It doesn't have to be this way. It WASN'T always this way--even back in the 19th century. The US USED to have a great scientific exploratory tradition. Even excluding the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Pike expedition, the US not only ran the great surveys, but sent an exploratory fleet around the world in the 1840's (Nathaniel Philbrick, Upon the Seas of Glory). This tradition continued into the Theodore Roosevelt years.

I see the current Republican/"conservative" attitude as being part of the extreme right's all-too-successful effort to create a "littler, dumber Amurrica." Sadly, they've succeeded. Too many of our fellow citizens don't know some of the great moments of our history, and don't see how our greatness was lost.

The Right has often accused us progressives of treason. This is a betrayal of America and its traditions by the Right staring us all point-blank in the face.