The Last American Shuttle and the Rise of China - Fall of the Eagle, rise of the Dragon -

Fall of the Eagle, Rise of the Dragon

President Obama's budget will limit funding of NASA and effectively end America's manned space program. The president sees the exploration of space as either an unnecessary waste of money and resources or not compatible with budgetary constraints, such as they are, in his administration. NASA's budget is but a small fraction of government spending, but it falls under the administration's proposed spending freeze.
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With the economic instability that this nation is currently facing it is with heartfelt sadness that I watched on as president Obama cut the NASA budget. Our hopes of going back to the moon and perhaps colonization died with a feint whimper. A civilization is not only defined by its economic success but by the philosophical reach of its people. When war takes precedence over art, or short sighted financial gains take the lead from self enlightenment. That is when we as a society are going to be shifted into neutral.
It pains me to see the self dissolution of the core of Americana unfold in real-time. How can we hope to correct this issue when the very individuals we elected to guide us into a 21st century Pax America are the very ones selling out our nation for personal gain? If we do not act on this atrocious act against our very being, we will not have a mound of pride to stand on. How can we ever hope to reach back into the stars if we are constantly watching our feet for ‘serpents’ of fear and compromise?
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American Thinker

It is hard to be optimistic. President Obama has apparently decided the United States should not be in the human spaceflight business. He obviously thinks NASA's historic mission is a waste of time and money. Until just two months before his election, he was proposing to use the $18 billion NASA budget as a piggybank to fund his favored education programs. With this budget proposal, he is taking a step in that direction.
NASA is not just a place to spend money, or to count jobs. It is the agency that has given us a better understanding of our present and hope for our future; an agency that gives us something to inspire us, especially young people.
NASA's Constellation program was not “over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies,” as stated in the White House budget plan. The program's problems were due to perennial budget deficiencies. It would have been sustainable for an annual increase equal to the amount thrown away on the “cash for clunkers” program, or just a fraction of the tens of billions of dollars expended annually on congressional earmarks. www.chron.com
With the insatiable appetite of the government to lend money to foreign space agencies while at the same time limiting the scope of our own, it is easy to see who their interests are. It is as if they can see the inevitable collapse of this nation and are throwing ‘sacks of money out of the burning building’. If we do nothing and allow our assets to become the driving force for another nation’s ambition then our children will have no one else to blame but us. God bless America.
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[edit on 19-2-2010 by Blood Eagle]

About a month ago, another thread was posted about Obama cutting the NASA budget. Here's what I posted:

I'm gonna miss the American space program. The Chinese are about to kick our asses... starting in low earth orbit with continued research into satellite killers, moving to moon real estate.

We'll spend the next 20 years playing catch-up as a result of the 4 years this fool is in office.

When the Chinese develop the ability to shoot down GPS satellites, or drop large rocks on our head from orbit, I guess 52 percent can say it was the hope and change they voted for.