Obama To NASA: ‘No Moon For You!’
In the 50s, a common vision of the future went like this: an American family packs up the car, drives to their local Spaceport, hops in the 10:35 am rocket and gets ready for a relaxing day-trip to the moon. Well, now it is the future — the year 2010 — and not only are we not vacationing on the moon, but we’re not sending astronauts there anymore either.
President Obama’s 2011 budget calls for a cancellation of Constellation, the billion-dollar NASA program whose goal was to get humans back on the moon in 2020. Obama wants to spend more money on pressing concerns like job creation and tax relief for businesses, so in order to keep the budget somewhat balanced (though it clocks in at almost $4 trillion), something had to go. Sorry, astronauts.
“It’s almost like a reboot of NASA’s human space flight program,” said Tariq Malik, Space.com’s managing editor.
So what happens now? If NASA really wants to make another trip to the moon, they’ll likely need to rely on wealthy investors and corporate underwriting. So don’t be surprised if NASA’s next spacecraft is called “The NASA/Frito-Lay Jalapeno Cheetos Flavor Rocket.” Space travel has never tasted so bad for you.
Source: CNN
Image Source: Mentalfloss
