U.K.'s Financial Times Says Obama Didn't Go Far Enough to Kill NASA

April 20, 2010 (LPAC)—Yesterday's Financial Times, while applauding President Obama's decision to scrap Constellation and the Moon program, opines that he "flunked the opportunity to drop it entirely," promising instead that someday there will be manned missions to Mars. The FT takes particular aim at what they call "NASA's fuzzier 'Dan Dare' mission, based on the idea of man's 'need to discover'"—i.e., the quest for scientific knowledge per se which is the very basis of NASA's true achievements, and which the British so hate.

Only perverts would say that, Lyndon LaRouche commented.

Constellation, the editorial states, "would have cost some $100 billion...to boldly go where man has gone before." They neglect to mention that this same amount will be spent in the Obama budget, but not to go anywhere. This British thrust is hardly surprising. For the first 50 years of the Space Age, the U.K. had NO manned space program, and only created a civilian space agency earlier this year. Instead, the FT advises the U.S. should do like Britain did, and reduce its space program to "practical initiatives designed to benefit life on Earth." Undoubtedly, the FT is thrilled that NASA will be participating in Earth Day celebrations this weekend.

Alternatively, describing the opposition to the "revised" plan Obama presented last week in Florida as including "a Rushmore-like lineup of Apollo veterans," Time Magazine's Jeffrey Kluger wonders if the "compromise" is not "very pretty lipstick to what remains, alas, a pig."

Similarly, four-time Shuttle astronaut, Tom Jones, calculates that the additional $6 billion Obama proposes be added to the NASA budget over the next five years is not a grand increase, but "does little more than pace inflation, and cannot fund both the revised Orion spacecraft," along with "bold" research, and breakthrough propulsion technology, and sending people into deep space. Obama's promise is "hollow," Jones concludes.