Fly Me To The Moon #382
By Hank Silverberg
My heart skipped a beat as I watched the Artemis II spacecraft lift off from Cape Canaveral this past week. I was immediately taken back to that 13 and 14 year-old kid who watched the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions of the 1960's and early 1970's. There was hope that by this time in the 21st century we would see the final frontier not as an expensive mission to beat the Russians to the Moon and keep the Cold War--cold, but rather as a mission to expand man's knowledge of the universe and take us where no human has gone before.
This past week I kept thinking about Apollo 18, 19, and 20, which were cancelled by the Nixon Administration. There were a number of reasons, but mostly it was the price tag that lead to the decision to scrub the missions, some of which were headed to the dark side of the Moon.
When Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in July of 1969, many of us hoped that within 50 years human beings would be colonizing Mars. It wasn't just scientists who had this dream. I expected it to happen in my lifetime. Ordinary people thought that the effort to save our planet while we find others that could sustain life was a good plan. Industry, as it always is, was ready to exploit potential minerals on the Martian surface, and some militarists were thinking about Mars bases that could give us a one- up on the Soviet Union as we headed into an uncertain nuclear future.
It didn't happen. Watergate, Vietnam, the insufficiency of programs to combat poverty, all distracted the country from the mission.
The Soviet Union is now gone, climate changes is worse and there is war and famine on this planet.
In the 80's we settled for the Space Shuttle program, a cargo plane that was needed to ship things to the International Space Station built in Earth's orbit.
The shuttle program never really provided a substitute for Moon or Mars missions. Though, along with the ISS, it did advance the science of space travel. Fourteen astronauts lost their lives when Challenger exploded on takeoff in 1986 and Columbia disintegrated when landing in 2003. Space, the final frontier, can be as deadly as frontiers have always been.
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| (Artemis commander Reed Wiseman peers out the window of Integrity, courtesy NASA) |
As I watched Artemis II heading into space for its mission AROUND the Moon that continues this week, there is new hope. The ultimate goal of the Artemis program is to set up a base on the Moon that can be used as a starting point for eventual missions to Mars. I still hope to be alive to see it. But word came shortly after the takeoff that the Trump Administration is now pushing again for a $6 billion cut for NASA in the fiscal 2027 budget. There is still $7.8 to $8.5 billion in that proposal to fund the Artemis Moon missions, but the cuts would have an impact on the International Space Station and other forms of space technology and the side effects could be costly to the space industry. There is opposition to the cuts which are similar to the proposal for cuts in the 2026 budget rejected by Congress last year. But critics say the lower funding could undermine NASA with an uncertain disruption in the agency's workforce.
It will be interesting to watch this time around. Will the final frontier become man's destiny? Or will down-to-Earth politics once again kill human exploration of space?
In 1962, in a speech in Houston, President Kennedy announced the original Moon mission with fanfare. One paragraph has always stood out for me:
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone..."
I hope they don't postpone it this time.
News You May Have Missed
March Madness
The NCAA's championship game is this week. In fact, you may be reading this after a champion has been crowned. But there is a different kind of March Madness coming from the White House. President Trump is sticking his nose into one more area of society he has no business in: sports.
On Friday he signed an Executive Order to regulate college sports. The 10 page order gives the NCAA more power to limit the athlete transfer movement, cap player eligibility and mandate funding requirements for women\s sports and Olympic sports. And he's threatening a limit for federal funding for any school that doesn't comply.
In the last year more than 70 athletes have filed lawsuits against the NCAA over eligibility to play after they transfer from one school to another. Students are usually limited to four years of eligibility over a five year period, making transfers from one college sports program to another more difficult. Trump wants the NCAA to have the power to keep it that way.
There has been great turmoil in college athletics because of a more competitive recruiting environment where compensation and endorsements by college athletes is now legal. The NCAA has spent $16 million litigating eligibility lawsuits.
It has been an issue in Congress with Democrats favoring more freedom of choice for college athletes and Republicans favoring more traditional restrictions on college athletes.
The E-O also invalidates some state laws that conflict with the order.
As with most of Trump's executive orders, a court challenge is expected.
CNN and CBS
Both CBS and CNN, two of the legacy TV networks that many people rely on for news and information, are now in the Paramount Skydance media empire. It is controlled by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder and Trump buddy Larry Ellison. So now, journalists and the public are watching closely to see if there is an editorial shift to the right by either network. CBS has already killed its journalisticly balanced and legendary radio network which goes off the air next month, and the CBS Evening News seems to be going a bit soft in its overall news coverage. But so far, there's been no obvious change at CNN. In fact, Trump's criticism of CNN continued even after Ellison took control. It may simply be too soon for the new leadership to have a major impact. A key test at CNN will be its coverage of the war with Iran, which has been the focus of much of the Trump Administration's wrath and its coverage of the upcoming mid-term elections. At CBS, the award-winning 60 Minutes may be the next target. The new Ellison leadership has already tainted one story which was widely reported, and Trump has been very critical of most of the 60 Minutes' editorial staff.
The public is watching closely, The changes may be subtle but impactful over time.
Most Offensive Quote of The Week!
The worst and most offensive quote of the last month came from Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. It came in one of his briefings to the media on the war with Iran:
"May almighty God continue to bless our troops in this fight. To the American people, please pray for them every day on bended knee with your family, in your schools, in your churches, in the name of Jesus Christ."
It's offensive and dumb in many ways. First, it comes from an Evangelical Christian take, which alienates almost everyone who is not an Evangelical Christian. Secondly, it sets up the war with Iran as a holy war, a crusade if you think about it, and there is nothing to inflame more anger in that part of the world than a call for a crusade. Of all those in the Trump Administration who seem to be out of tune with the American public, Hegseth is the worst. Pope Leo, American by birth, rebuked Hegseth in his Palm Sunday sermon:
"This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
Hegseth seems even more out of touch with the American public than his boss, Donald Trump.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-again-looks-cut-nasa-193700000.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall
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