OBAMA SPUTNIK MOMENT: THE LOSS OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

description

Despite mothballing the US space shuttle program putting hundreds of aerospace and NASA employees out of work, PRESIDENT OBAMA calls for a "Sputnik moment" to scare the crap out of us!

For those not familiar with history beyond Kim Kardashian’s latest PR stunt, Sputnik, the first satellite put into orbit, was launched by the former Soviet Union in 1957 and sent the general populace and the government into a cold war panic.

Fearing the Russians would take the high ground in space, installing space platforms from which to casually atomic bombs onto the free world from a fixed geosynchronous orbit, then President  Eisenhower and his team instituted the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) – a catch-up program that sent the Race for Space into overdrive.

With the Russians beating us on every New Frontier – first living creature into space, a dog, first man into space –  by the time Alan Shepard became the First American into Space in 1961, the fear that we would sleep" by the light of a red moon" was more than just an anxiety-ridden nightmare of the Atomic Age.

Overnight science and math became emphasized in schools as the quest for tomorrow’s soldier-scientists was pushed to the forefront in education.

Enter JFK who made his famous proclamation that America would have a "man on the moon by the end of the decade".  We did – landing  NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong and  Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface July 20, 1969.

As The ENQUIRER reported previously America’s dominance as a world leader was directly traceable to technological advancements that trickled down from the space program into general use – micro-circuitry, GPS, wi-fi, microwave technology, computers,  zero-gravity medical breakthroughs and MORE.

But now, with the US reduced to a third world power in space exploration, paying billions to piggyback our astronauts onto foreign spacecraft to shuttle them to the International Space Station, the dissolution of the American Dream seems not only inevitable but more than probable.
 
In a speech yesterday, Obama compared the 1957 wake-up call following the launch of the Sputnik satellite to the current dismal state of American education and how it  impacts the nation’s economic future.

"In this race for the future, American is in danger of falling behind," Obama said.

"If this is truly going to be our Sputnik moment, we need a commitment to innovation we haven’t seen since President Kennedy challenged us to go to the moon."

Yet, as it was made quite clear in both the film and book The Right Stuff  "funding is what makes this bird fly. No bucks, no Buck Rogers."

No Buck Rogers, no future.

No future advancements in technology and America will soon be reduced to a third world power – as other nations leave us in the dust.

And while the Department of Defense has stepped up their game with their secret robot space plane and space tourism has been placed in the hands of multi-national corporations, the very program that kept us at the forefront as a world leader, NASA, remains threatened from within. 

If Obama wants to relaunch the space race, instead of mouthing empty platitudes, the administration needs to rethink their current appraisal of national priorities.

First, by giving the space program the funding and jobs required needed to not only conquer the stars but ourselves.

A rebirth of national pride comes only with true change and the determination to make it happen.

–DICK SIEGEL in New York
  special to National Enquirer.com