President Obama is promoting his new vision for America's space program, but he faces powerful opposition: Some of the nation's most famous astronauts say his plan will be "devastating" to space exploration. Obama wants to cancel the $108 billion program to return astronauts to the moon by 2020, but boost NASA's budget by $6 billion over five years, investing in longer term projects and encouraging private efforts to transport people into space. Apollo-era commanders Jim Lovell, Eugene Cernan, and the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, say the Obama plan—in particular, doing away with the new lunar mission—puts the U.S. on "a long downhill slide to mediocrity." Who's right? (Watch Obama's announcement.)
The government doesn't belong in the space travel business: It doesn't matter what Neil Armstrong wants, says Ryan W. McMaken in LewRockwell.com. "Government spending on the space program is unnecessary and totally wasteful" now that private companies like Virgin Galactic are investing in space travel. And manned space travel is unnecessary, since robots can tell us as more about the surface of Mars than a "glorified crash-test dummy" like Armstrong.
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