Brandon

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Barack "Skywalker" Obama About to Unleash New Space Race with China?

I'd almost feel sorry for his peacenik followers if they weren't such idiots!

During the primary season Barack Hussein Obama's campaign was built on the rage of defeatist, disarmament delusionists. In one famous video he made it a point to say "I will not weaponize space."

Yet now, we have the first inklings of a space policy that does more to integrate the military into the space program than anything President Bush would have dared to suggest:

Obama Moves to Counter China With Pentagon-NASA Link
By Demian McLean
Bloomberg News
Jan. 2, 2008

-- 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.”

China, which destroyed one of its aging satellites in a surprise missile test in 2007, is making strides in its spaceflight program. The military-run effort carried out a first spacewalk in September and aims to land a robotic rover on the moon in 2012, with a human mission several years later.
...
China is designing satellites that, once launched, could catch up with and destroy U.S. spy and communication satellites, said a Nov. 20 report to Congress from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. China’s State Council Information Office declined to comment on the nation’s anti- satellite or manned programs.

To boost cooperation between NASA and the Pentagon, Obama has promised to revive the National Aeronautics and Space Council, which oversaw the entire space arena for four presidents, most actively from 1958 to 1973.
Paritally erasing the long standing separation between NASA and the Dept. of Defense will only fuel a space race with military implications. One wonders how liberals who fear the military's intrusion into all facets of U.S. life will view this "change." Is this what they voted for?

And what signal does this send to the Chinese? Among the first acts Obama may perform upon taking office is to militarize the space program?

Yikes! Obama is sounding more and more like a neocon every day.

Perhaps Obama saw this video a few too many times for his own good:

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