With less than 24 hours before Obama‘s conference on the fate of the American space program, he’s been blasted by First Man on the Moon – Neil Armstrong!
Armstrong who touched down on the lunar surface in 1969, sent a strongly worded rebuke to Obama’s planned dismantling of NASA along with fellow astronauts Apollo 13’s James Lovell and Apollo 17’s Eugene Cernan.
As The ENQUIRER reported previously in a series of in-depth reports (SEE BELOW), Obama has been under attack for his proposed budget blip to end America’s dominance in space and plans a presser tomorrow — April 15 aka Tax Day — on Florida’s space coast. The Obama plan has been heavily criticized by those hardest hit by the plan – those men and women dedicated to The Great American Dream.
Here is the complete text of the letter sent to the President:
"The United States entered into the challenge of space exploration under President Eisenhower’s first term, however, it was the Soviet Union who excelled in those early years.
"Under the bold vision of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and with the overwhelming approval of the American people, we rapidly closed the gap in the final third of the 20th century, and became the world leader in space exploration.
"When President Obama recently released his budget for NASA, he proposed a slight increase in total funding, substantial research and technology development, an extension of the International Space Station operation until 2020, long range planning for a new but undefined heavy lift rocket and significant funding for the development of commercial access to low earth orbit.
"Although some of these proposals have merit, the accompanying decision to cancel the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating.
"America’s only path to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station will now be subject to an agreement with Russia to purchase space on their Soyuz (at a price of over 50 million dollars per seat with significant increases expected in the near future) until we have the capacity to provide transportation for ourselves. The availability of a commercial transport to orbit as envisioned in the President’s proposal cannot be predicted with any certainty, but is likely to take substantially longer and be more expensive than we would hope.
"It appears that we will have wasted our current ten plus billion dollar investment in Constellation and, equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded.
"For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature. While the President’s plan envisages humans traveling away from Earth and perhaps toward Mars at some time in the future, the lack of developed rockets and spacecraft will assure that ability will not be available for many years.
"Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity. America must decide if it wishes to remain a leader in space. If it does, we should institute a program which will give us the very best chance of achieving that goal."
signed,
Neil Armstrong, Commander, Apollo 11
James Lovell, Commander, Apollo 13
Eugene Cernan, Commander, Apollo 17
