Promises From Candidate Obama Different From Actions Of
President Obama
By Wes Oleszewski
A few days ago my seven-year-old daughter was deep into a book
about exploration of the moon. When she asked me about some of the
pictures, the book attracted my attention because it featured
several unique photos from Apollos 15, 16 and 17. Most kid’s
books simply re-hash the same old Apollo 11 and 12 images. I
answered her questions, pointed out a couple of glaring errors in
the text and then told her that when I was a boy I sat in front of
my TV and watched those guys walking on the moon as it happened.
Her eyes widened. I asked if she would like to see the astronauts
walking on the moon on TV? She excitedly exclaimed
“Yeaaaaah.”
Hustling to my office I plucked my Apollo 16, Spacecraft Films
DVD set from the shelf. Since she was reading about rocks and
boulders I decided to show her EVA 3, Station 11 and the
“house rock” at North Ray crater. For those of you
unfamiliar with that moment in history, it was an event that
dramatically demonstrated what lunar “Exploration” was
really all about as well as what we humans did and did not realize
about the lunar environment. Astronauts John Young and Charlie Duke
had stopped at a designated “station” to do some
sampling. While there, what appeared to be a fair sized boulder a
short distance away caught Duke’s attention and the two
decided to stroll over and sample it. To understand what happened
next, you must understand one simple fact about depth perception on
the moon… for the most part, there is none. You see, in the
earth’s atmosphere, even on the clearest of days, there is
always some sort of particulate floating around that causes haze to
some degree. Our eyes look through that haze and our brain is
hard-wired to interpret that information and judge depth and
distance. Although this is not the only component in depth
perception, it is a major component. On the moon, there is no
atmosphere and thus no haze and the human brain is simply not
hard-wired to compensate- so a very large object far away can
appear as a smaller object close by. What Young and Duke did not
realize was that the rock they were headed for was the size of a
three story house and nearly a city block away. As the two
astronauts bounced off toward the rock, they appeared to shrink and
the rock appeared to grow as the viewer’s brain began to
reconcile the image on the TV. I saw the same look of amazement on
my daughter’s face that I must have had on mine in 1972,
watching as the event actually took place. Afterward she went back
to her book about the moon with a new outlook.
After a short time she asked, “Daddy, when are they going
to the moon again?”
For me, as a parent, that was a painful question to respond to.
After all, in our household things like science, math, aviation and
spaceflight hold a stature that most households reserve for sports
teams. When my kids ask about the weather they get answers that
delve toward the physics and actual science behind the movement of
the atmosphere. When they ask why toast gets brown, they get an
explanation that they can understand and carry around as to how
that happens. They get the truth of the situation and not some
pop-culture fluff. So, why should I hold back about why the United
States is no longer going to return to the moon? I answered
factually.
“No, sweety… we’re not going back to the
moon.”
“Why?” she enquired as any seven-year-old would.
“Because President Barack Obama canceled the program.”
I responded.
“But, you said I could go to the moon someday.” She
said as she thumbed through her book of lunar surface photos.
What I saw unfolding before me was an up close and personal
result of what will soon prove to be one of the greatest failures
of leadership in United States history. It is one result of a
deliberate bait-and-switch tactic whose only goal was the election
of a president. You see, the same person who canceled the chance of
my daughter one day walking on the lunar surface, got himself
elected by promising to do exactly the opposite.
Nine days prior to the 2008 Democrat Convention, where the
party’s candidate would be selected, the Barack Obama 2008
campaign published a paper titled, “Barack Obama: Advancing
the Frontiers of Space Exploration” It outlined what, if
elected, candidate Obama would do about the nation’s space
program. Although at the time of the paper’s
publication Obama was seen as a shoe-in for the position of
presidential candidate, an earlier statement made by him was seen
as a trouble spot. Back in January of 2008 Obama made a classic
politician’s mistake by actually telling the truth in public.
When speaking about NASA and the Bush proposed Constellation
Program to return to the moon, he stated that he would delay the
program by five years and take that money and give it to education.
That anti-space program sentiment ruffled more than a few feathers
in the state of Florida where, at the time, spaceflight was a major
employer and Constellation was geared up to take the place of the
retiring Space Shuttle and take in a large portions of the people
working on the shuttle. Obama’s “delay” would
cost thousands of jobs and his remark could cost him both Florida
and the election. So, as the likelihood of an Obama candidacy
loomed large, the campaign was not taking any chances with Florida.
They needed a cleverly worded policy statement that completely
covered-up the candidate’s actual intentions. Then, once
elected, he could do whatever he wanted with the space program and
it would cost him little more than additional cover-ups. It was a
clever bait and switch scam similar to those used for years by
unscrupulous retailers and politicians alike- the only difference
being that retailers can go to jail for doing it.
In the first paragraph of the “bait” paper the Obama
campaign calls for “A robust and balanced program of space
exploration and scientific discovery.” Let’s take some
time and cherry-pick some ripe statements from the paper. To begin
with it states “Barack Obama believes the United States
should maintain its international leadership in space while at the
same time inspiring a new generation of Americans to dream beyond
the horizon.” Funny… I did not see such inspiration in
the eyes of my seven-year-old when I told her that our return to
the moon had been canceled by President Obama.
In the second paragraph of the “bait” paper the
title is “The Challenge” and the Obama campaign
accurately points out that “…the Bush Administration
set and ambitious agenda for NASA, (The VSE and Constellation
Program) but has since failed to provide adequate funding or
leadership to move forward…” Indeed, although
Constellation was fully and adequately funded by two Congresses,
the Bush Office of Management and Budget (OMB) elected to short
NASA nearly $3 billion every year from 2005 to 2008. You see, OMB
cannot award more to an agency than Congress appropriates, but
under the direction of the president they can award less. It is a
slick way of cutting an agency’s budget in a nearly silent
manner that was first used by Richard Nixon. Thus, the paper
indicates that Obama saw this as a major funding issue- but what
would he do about it? Well after the Obama Administration took
power, his own OMB did nothing to restore the annual near $3
billion shortfall imposed on NASA by the Bush OMB. In other words,
Obama’s response to Bush’s failure “…to
provide adequate funding or leadership to move forward.” was
to fail on an equal level.
Another answer to the NASA’s problems came in the “A
Comprehensive Vision” portion of the “bait”
paper. There Obama states that when elected he “…will
reestablish…” the National Aeronautics and Space
Council which advised presidents on the space program from1958 to
1973. Great idea, however, as of this writing some two and one half
years into the Obama Presidency, NOTHING has been done in that
direction. In fact, in the administration’s last official
document released on the subject of “National Space
Policy” in June of 2010, no mention of the reformation of the
council was made. Does anyone reading this think that we’ll
see the council formed before the end of the Obama Presidency?
Anyone?... hands… anyone?
Of course the largest bait in the “bait” paper comes
in the section titled “The Gap.” As the Bush OMB was
short-changing NASA’s funding, the Congress was imposing a
couple of protracted Continuing Resolutions which delayed funding
and caused even greater delays in the future development of the
Constellation Program. Such delays created a rapidly growing
“gap” between the retirement of the Space Shuttle and
the operational beginning of Constellation hardware. As the
Apollo/Shuttle gap showed, even a short gap between programs causes
the rapid loss of skilled spaceflight workers, and once those
workers depart for other jobs, the rarely come back to spaceflight.
Additionally, in order for United States personnel to get to the
International Space Station, which $100 billion American tax
dollars paid to build, NASA decided they would rent seats on the
Russian Soyuz. Such seats originally cost from $51 to $55 million
each, but as the actual gap drew closer our Russian
“partners” saw fit to raise the price to $64 million
per seat. (It is interesting to point out by the way that the
Russians fly tourists to the ISS for just $22 million per seat.)
The “bait” paper states that, “Barack Obama is
committed to the necessary INVESTMENTS to ensure we close this gap
as much as technically feasible and to minimize the reliance on
foreign capabilities.” By now we all know what Obama means by
the word “Investments” and it is not a reference to
buying stock. “Investments” translates into Federal
dollars. However, when President Obama drew a line through the
Constellation program he, in fact, extended the gap from an
estimated five years to- indefinitely. He thus also extended
“…the reliance on foreign capabilities.” by the
same factor. Additionally, his “ObamaSpace” FY2011
budget proposed taking nearly all of the “investments”
in manned spaceflight and handing them over to selected private
companies and so by doing that he proposed to effectively deleted
the “investments” for ALL manned space exploration.
Continuing, the “bait” paper also states in the same
paragraph noted above that: “He will also work with the space
industry to ensure that retention of workforce and technical
capabilities during the transition from the shuttle to its
successor.” Yeah… just ask the thousands of workers
laid off at KSC how ensured they feel right now. Then drive around
the space coast and talk to the thousands of small business owners
who depend on that workforce and will be going under post-shuttle.
Remember- it is a vulgar play on words to say that we spend money
in space. Not one dollar has ever been spent IN space. It is all
spent here on the ground and it soaks back into the US economy.
Following that paragraph in the “bait” paper the
Obama campaign lists four bullet points that the candidate will
do.
- “Retain options for additional shuttle flights.”
(Note the plural “flights” yet the following fine-print
text details just a single flight. With Obama, reading the fine
print is critical,) Rather than canceling that additional shuttle
flight- Obama stood silent ( or voted “present”) while
the single additional flight was scheduled and funded by the
Congress and somehow got past the Obama OMB- so from the Obama
perspective, he kept this promise.
- “Speeding the next generation vehicle.” Obama
canceled all of the next generation vehicles that were in work at
NASA when this paper was written. It took Congress to over-ride
Obama and re-instate the Orion MPCV and push into development the
SLS launch vehicle in place of the Ares vehicles that he
canceled.
- “Using the private sector.” He kept this promise-
in fact he attempted to “use” the private sector to
castrate NASA’s entire human spaceflight program. Again,
Congress stepped in and moderated the Obama agenda.
- “Working with international allies.” Here it states
that Obama will enlist the help of the international partners to
support the ISS. This, of course, happened by default when his
cancelation of the Ares launch vehicles left the United States with
zero capability to go into space once the shuttle was retired.
Jumping ahead a bit we find the “Embracing Human Space
Exploration” section of the “bait” paper. It
states that “Human spaceflight is important to
America’s political, economic, technological and scientific
leadership.” Sounds pretty good until you look into the
future where Obama has United States astronauts riding Soyuz for an
undefined time at $64 million or more per seat. The text goes on to
state that Barack Obama “…endorses the goal of sending
human missions to the moon by 2020 as a precursor in an orderly
progression to missions to more distant destinations, including
Mars.” He canceled that.
Where I come from, when someone tells you they are going to do
one thing while fully intending to do the opposite, we have a
traditional word for that act- we call it “lying.”
Like all political papers the “bait” paper rambles
on and on, however, the sections that most applied to my
daughter’s disappointment are all that I have elected to
highlight here. The common retort to what I have presented is
normally “Well, all politicians make promises they
don’t keep.” That is true, but this one goes beyond the
chicken in every pot bloviating. This paper, in contrast to his
“delay Constellation for five years and give that money to
education” statement added to what he has done while in
office to date demonstrates a clear and systematic effort to
deceive voters who, unlike the candidate himself, have a clear
concern and interest in United States human spaceflight and manned
exploration beyond earth orbit. In short- he lied to help get
elected. Worse than that, he later took the heart that has pumped
new technology and innovation into American society for over a half
century and cut it out without a second thought.
Look past the wall of static currently being produced by the
Obama Administration’s operatives who lecture, who do the
talking head bit, who blog and who actually spend their entire
workday surfing the Internet looking for editorials like this to
respond to. These people expertly toss out a lot of circle talk
about “can’t-do” and “someday in the
future” and point toward completely undefined "game changing"
and "path breaking" technologies garnished with the glories private
space companies all of whom have never had a manned launch. Look,
instead, directly at the person in charge, the one individual who
made the decision to stop this nation from returning to the moon in
your lifetime.
Just as JFK will go down in history as being the one individual
who directed the United States to the moon, Barack Obama, who was
elected by way of some of the greatest bait and switch sales jobs
in US History, has directed that our children will wilt in an
America withering into a technological third world nation rather
than aspiring to walk on the lunar surface. One wonders if his
campaign had stuck to the truth- that if elected he would cancel
United States human space exploration- would he have been placed in
the position to do so by the voting public?