NASA-Pentagon: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

Boy this ought to set the Liberals who voted for Obama off.

Apparently there is serious talk coming from the Obama camp of merging NASA's civilian space program with the pentagon's military space program.

No doubt the folks at NASA are in a tizzy over this proposal. Many of them are the ivory-towered elitist academic types who see patriotism and politics (except for Global Warming) as being beneath them.

Bringing the military into the picture will greatly offend the sensibilities. Of course I'm sure that the hard-headed military pragmatists are just as thrilled at the prospect of dealing with some of NASA's prima donnas. It's a match made in Washington D.C. Oh what fun!

Well, here's the story as reported by Bloomberg:

Obama Moves to Counter China in Space With Pentagon-NASA

By Demian McLean

Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the U.S.’s civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China.

Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency’s planned launch vehicle, which isn’t slated to fly until 2015, according to people who’ve discussed the idea with the Obama team.

The potential change comes as Pentagon concerns are rising over China’s space ambitions because of what is perceived as an eventual threat to U.S. defense satellites, the lofty battlefield eyes of the military.

“The Obama administration will have all those issues on the table,” said Neal Lane, who served as President Bill Clinton’s science adviser and wrote recently that Obama must make early decisions critical to retaining U.S. space dominance. “The foreign affairs and national security implications have to be considered.”

Personally there's a lot of very good reasoning going on here. The move would offer, economies of scale, removal of redundant efforts, a number of other mutual interests. Of course one would have to overcome the natural suspicion that these academic types have of the motives of our military, and their contempt for what many in the academic world consider a neanderthal attitude towards international cooperation.

Then again, I am sure that members of the military have reservations of their own in dealing with these academics and their blindness to the realities of the adversarial world in which we live.

This sounds like a good match, with both groups riding herd over each other; it might just be the perfect answer to our floundering space program.

I'm up for it. With China becoming as aggressive as they are, and the Indian space program ramping up, it might make sense to place the imprimatur of our military on our national space program.

Like I said, I bet the Liberals who voted for Obama are really squirming over this possibility. Look for some strong kick-back from those on the Left and from within NASA.

Woo-hoo! Maybe 2009 is going to be more fun than I expected. I love to see the discomfiture of Liberals.

Long Live Our American Republic!!!!

What do you think?

To leave your opinion click on the word "COMMENT(S)" below