Monday, January 26, 2009

Debate time: Stimulus money for space?

From the "In Case You Missed It" files ...

Our local watchdog columnist, Matt Reed, suggested that President Obama take a look at investing some of the stimulus package money into public works projects related to human space flight.

Here's what Matt wrote last week. Read it and weigh in yourself.

As news media coverage of Inauguration Day borders on celebration, now is a good time for a reminder it's not unpatriotic to criticize a president's policies.

One that looks like a loser for Brevard County: spending $400 million in stimulus money on NASA climate-change research, instead of on "shovel-ready" spaceflight projects that are struggling for cash and likely to lose thousands of jobs at Kennedy Space Center.

We do need climate research. But universities, foundations, corporations and even NASA already are hard at work on that. So it's unclear how more research will stimulate anything.

Meanwhile, Central Florida's economy definitely will suffer from the executive branch's poorly planned shift from shuttle operations to the Constellation moon-Mars program.

Mr. President: Why not save high-skilled jobs and speed development of new technology by spending that $400 million on spaceflight?


What do you think. Click comment below to weigh in.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why isn't space policy even listed on the whitehouse.gov agenda page?

Anonymous said...

Obama needs to use some of this stimulus to keep Shuttle alive and speed up the Constellation program.. that is if he really wants to save jobs, build a greener environment etc.. What investment could be more applicable, more inline with an economic recovery and more American than our Manned Space program...

I fear that NASA's problems will be forgotten or lost in the economic jungle that has erupted over the past few months.. Our congressmen MUST keep this issue in front of the president until he has addressed it and funded it!!!!