Democrats Off The Leash, NASA Feeling Faint

It had to happen. In the mad dash to spend every dollar that's not nailed down, stuffed in a mattress, earning interest in Russian Mafia bank accounts or otherwise committed to useful things, Democrats have finally crossed a line into a pure and utter madness the likes of which we have not seen before, at least on a national scale. Dissatisfied with having a thousand government agencies merely do the job for which they were created - however ill-advised it might be to have a thousand government agencies, and however ill-conceived they might all be - the Giant Brains of the Democrat Party have decided to diversify, and have these sundry agencies stop doing that for which they were created and to now do things for which they were not created, funded, chartered, or for that matter, demonstrated the slightest aptitude.

For today's example, I give you the article in the Feb. 3rd Houston Chronicle titled "NASA urged to keep feet on Earth". Honestly folks, you can't make this stuff up. A study group of the Usual Suspects from the James A. Baker Institute at Rice University - surprisingly comprised of Clinton-era hacks and other denizens of the Democrat Party - has called for NASA to cease the manned exploration of space so that they can concentrate on "energy and the environment....especially climate change".

This study demands America eliminate the NASA program to return to and colonize the moon, and in so doing, kill any and all prospects for space travel not just now, but forever. Of course, that's not what these experts say, but it is the practical result of all of the specific initiatives they propose. NASA would then take this funding and redirect it "to tackle climate change", launch satellites "that study the Earth", and use NASA's supercomputers "to evaluate the future consequences of global warming".

Mark my words, within the year, there will be authoritative new findings to buttress the Dogma of The Global Warmers, freshly regurgitated from whatever pet name NASA has for its Supercomputer; and seeing as how these conclusions came from the Omnipotent Innards of such a machine, the results will be incontestable. Of course, this will only be so because The Global Warmers are immune and even stupefied by the concept of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). It matters not if their model was fallacious to begin with; it will achieve ever greater credibility merely because it has been recycled through increasingly more expensive computers, made all the more possible by diverting the resources of formerly productive agencies like NASA to their pet schemes.

I can't wait until these numbskulls - fresh from dismantling NASA - do the inevitable study on, say, DARPA, or Lawrence Livermore. Talk about agencies without a purpose, what with all that military research and such! Talk about under-utilized Supercomputers that could be deployed to validate the Global Warming Model! "And they shall beat their swords into plowshares...."

Oh yes, the authors also insist that NASA "get back to research, finding new technology", apparently of the opinion that this is what NASA has done in the past. What a perfect example of Democrat self-delusion. Do these folks actually believe that all of the technology NASA produced happened in a vacuum, or were they just not sentient back in the 60s and 70s? It was the very fact that NASA had a grand objective of "landing on the moon, and returning safely to the Earth" that made all of that technology possible. So typical of the bureaucratic mindset of government apparats to believe that technological advancement can be achieved without inspiration, without goals. No, funding is all we need, and the Technology will shower forth.

There's a couple of other suggestions of such shimmering idiocy that they would be detectable by a 5th Grader reject from any number of overfunded Special Needs course available in HISD:

- Extend the life of the Shuttle for five more years so as to insure the supply of parts and people to the Space Station.

- Cancel the next-generation heavy lift vehicle Aries.

- Downsize our next-generation spaceship, Orion, from six seats to three.

Each of these suggestions on their own reveal a shortsightedness that would take your breath away.

First, why extend the life of the vehicle that literally has destroyed NASA, and made it the aimless, underfunded Panhandler it is today? Granted, NASA should have questioned the efficacy of trying to achieve their objectives by creating a space vehicle the size of an office building back in the 70s when some genius first brought the idea up, but when you do you stop compounding the problem? I would have thought you stopped compounding the problem about the time each shuttle flight cost $1 billion dollars.

Even as that inconceivable sum rolls off your tongue, one is reminded that it would take naught but the money saved on a mere handful of Shuttle flights to not only fund the Orion in its original six person configuration, but to accelerate its development so that it could bridge the gap after the Shuttle's retirement.

Which brings us to the next bit of idiocy: downsizing the Orion from 6 people to 3. Surely the authors of the study realize that in so doing, they render the Orion useless in servicing the ISS, inasmuch as the plans are moving forward to expand the crew from a skeleton crew of three to an operational crew of six or more. Were they successful in downsizing the Orion, it not only would serve no purpose for crew changes, but would be useless as a lifeboat, leaving America all the more dependent on Russia for the life of the ISS.

Finally, the commission proposes eliminating the Ares heavy lift vehicle, which would leave the U.S. incapable of launching the heavy payloads necessary to pursue manned flight or even adequately servicing the ISS. They blithely suggest that private companies take over these duties, apparently oblivious of the fact that no private company has the resources necessary to produce such a vehicle. Further to this point, they seem intent on not using any of the astonishing technology perfected on the Space Shuttle to advance the Space Program.

No, this study reeks of bureaucrats closing ranks to defend their pet projects, not to mention their long term employment. The mission of NASA - as has been the case with so many other government agencies - is simply to give people a place to go and pick up a paycheck, or renew their funding. That is the only thing that explains such insanity. That perhaps, and the more sinister objective of dismantling NASA in such as way as to ensure they are capable of no mission other than Global Warming research.

A MODEST PROPOSAL

Which brings us to the United States military. You know, it's not like there's absolutely no premise for having one Agency do the job when another Agency cannot. What makes this NASA study so remarkable is that they would have NASA stop doing what its acronym stands for, literally cease to involve itself with Space. My recommendation would be - rather than upending NASA and totally changing its mission - that we simply make it a part of the U.S. Military. In so doing, NASA would find itself renewed.

There is precedent for this kind of thing: Under the Bush Administration, the American military took over all diplomacy and nation building in the Middle East, Europe and large portions of the Americas from the State Department, albeit that it didn't replace its primary mission: waging war. Like so many other public agencies, Foggy Bottom - as State is so aptly known - had become so larded with Bureaucrats, Appointees, Infighters, Place-savers, Lifers, Doorstops, Backstabbers and Family Members that the agency long ago ceased to have any purpose other than a) to perpetuate its own existence and b) to sabotage the foreign policy objectives of Republican presidents.

Of course, only in time of war does the Military come in close or sustained proximity to such as Diplomats and the other denizens of State, and they were appalled by what they saw, which is why our fighting men and women promptly relieved our diplomatic corps of any responsibilities other than validating parking in the Green Zone, chased them all out of Afghanistan, confined them to their opulent new digs in the heart of Baghdad, and promptly won not only the war, but the peace. The results are everywhere to be seen: The Anbar Awakening, The Surge, the political defeat of Al Quaeda and Baathist Loyalists, the reconciliation of Sunni and Shia - all accomplished by the military.

There may be a template in there somewhere that can be duplicated. If we taxpayers are to ever get our money's worth out of government employees, perhaps the military could take over other operations as well. One shudders with glee to think what Patreus and a hand-picked cadre could do if turned loose on Health and Human Services or the Department of the Interior for a few months.

Or, for that matter, with NASA.