I read today that President Obama submitted his budget and I was saddened to see that he cut NASA’s funding for the return to the moon.

I understand that the country’s out of money, and that there are programs that benifit other things but I think people tend to underestimate the science return that NASA gives us, let alone the much-needed spark of imagination and wonder that our current crop of children so desperately need.

I remember little from my childhood, but I can still remember the family huddled around the TV watching grainy black-and-white video from the moon missions in the late 60′s.  Seeing the astronauts bouncing around, kicking up dust and wondering how long I’d have to wait to get my Jetson’s briefcase-car and my robot maid.  Those events impacted our culture, the world’s culture, to the point of creating a colloquialism; “Well, if they can put a man on the moon…”

In cutting NASA’s budget, he’s basically killed any type of manned planetary exploration for the foreseeable future.  And, if at some point we (as a nation) change our mind, we’ll be years behind technologically from where we could have been.  I have to think that we could have cut just a few other non-essential services to throw some money NASA’s way and preserve the program.

We, as a species on this planet, are unique in one fundemental way:  We can see our own inevitable end.  We know that at some point, this planet will cease to be.  It may happen soon due to a cosmic impact or global thermonuclear war, it may happen in a few centuries due to planetary overpopulation or global warming, or if by some miracle we manage to survive to the bitter end we’ll see our own sun turn into a red giant in a few billion years.  The point is; it will end at some point.  I (as a species) would rather not be here when it happens.

Kennedy faced similar budget and economic challenges to what Obama is facing, and rather than cut NASA funding he increased it.  He chose to fund our technological sector rather than reduce it and I think he said it best:

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it–we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world’s leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. 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, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Someone looked at the moon and said, “Let’s put a man up there” and they did.  Soon, there will be no one left alive on this planet that has set foot on another.  Thirty-eight years later Kennedy’s vision has turned into national health care, bailouts and cash-for-clunkers.  We choose easy.