Harrison Schmitt, member of Apollo 19 in 1972 and later a US senator, published a proposal yesterday in which he suggested NASA should be scrapped and replaced with a new agency, one that would have a single objective: making America the world leader in space exploration.
The suggested space agency, the National Space Exploration Administration, would cost $2-3 billion more than NASA currently does, but Schmitt believe it’s worth it and that taxpayers would gladly pay for it.
“This is not just a competition between nations; it’s a competition between freedom and tyranny. The United States is the only power on Earth today that has in its DNA a protection of liberty, and if we decide to back off from space or any other major human endeavor, then we put that liberty in jeopardy.
The Obama administration has basically said that they won’t pursue an exceptional space program for the United States and that they’re just as happy to have China move forward into deep space, and be dependent on Russia for transport to the International Space Station.”
Schmitt, who was elected to the Senate in 1976 as a Republican from New Mexico, says China’s domination of deep space and Russia’s domination of near-Earth space would lower America’s international standing of the U.S. in the same way the Soviet Union winning the space race would have changed the outcome of the Cold War.
Which, in other words, means the astronaut is worried Russia and China are tuking er speis jerbs!
