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If we need evidence NASA has changed from the miraculous can-do agency we fondly remember from our youth into the politically correct, pandering, publicity hungry government bureaucracy it is today we need look no further than the upcoming space shuttle launch. By the time liftoff occurs, we will surely have heard from countless newscasts, talk shows, and the inevitable and insufferable "up close and personal" segments that this will be the first shuttle mission to be commanded by a woman.
While this may be the latest achievement of women in space, the timing of this particular mission is galling to those of us who remember the glory days of NASA. The launch is scheduled for July 20th. If you're old enough to remember, or by some miracle learned it in history class, July 20, 1999 will mark the 30th Anniversary of the day man first set foot on the moon. The operative word in that sentence is man.
In the intervening years, NASA has gown increasingly uncomfortable with the fact the agency was populated almost exclusively by white males back then, and is now seeking to fashion itself into a kind of technological Rainbow Coalition. Every real or imagined accomplishment of minorities, and especially women, is hyped ad nauseam.
Even a montage of space exploration accomplishments shown on the NASA channel quickly fades the audio before Neil Armstrong can complete his famous "One small step for man" quote. Is it a coincidence that the agency that built its reputation on the accomplishments of men has seen that reputation become increasingly tarnished as it embraced political correctness. Guts and determinationNASA was formed in the late 1950's out of a mixture of exploratory idealism, cold war reality and the idea nothing was impossible. When the space agency had a total of 15 minutes of manned space flight experience President Kennedy made the audacious statement that we would land on the moon by the end of the decade. NASA responded by making a quantum leap in our existing technology.Key to this success were the NASA employees. The common factor was that everyone who worked for NASA was the best at what he did. The lunar landing has to rank as the greatest technological achievement in the history of man. The crew of Apollo 11 made a journey of quarter million miles and achieved an almost pinpoint landing in a flimsy lunar module with less on-board computing power than one of today's hand held calculators. While the technology involved was truly astounding, the success of the Apollo program all came down to the guts and determination of the brave and dedicated astronauts and the intelligence and innovation of the ground crew. They got the job done, even if nobody was keeping score on NASA's estrogen level and skin pigmentation at that time. I'm sure the crew of the ill fated Apollo 13 are glad that mission control was staffed based on merit rather than affirmative action during their mission. Politics fueling the programOf course all of this has changed. After we accomplished the goal of landing on the moon, the public rapidly lost interest in space exploration. Faced with a steadily declining level of funding and lack of a galvanizing focus, NASA embraced the idea of the reusable space shuttle which would serve as a ferry to a permanently orbiting space station.Correctly assuming that federal money will always be guaranteed to programs that "celebrate our diversity"; the agency has evolved into the space exploration division of the Lifetime Network in an attempt to guarantee its survival. The push to get more women into the program led to the dismissal of scores of qualified male astronaut candidates. Deke Slayton one of the original 7 Mercury astronauts once said, "the highest priority project at NASA during the 1970's was to invent a device that would allow women to go to the bathroom in weightlessness". The flight of Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, was hyped beyond all reason in a flight that had little scientific benefit. As a woman prepares to climb into the front left seat of shuttle, the feminists and their sympathizers will be in overdrive pontificating about what it all means. What it meansIt actually means very little in terns of NASA history. Piloting the technologically advanced space shuttle to the relative safety of near earth orbit can hardly compare with the sheer wonder, danger, and complexity of going hurtling toward the moon in a spacecraft built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.It is sad however that NASA has to artificially play up the accomplishments of women by degrading the accomplishments of men. By scheduling the launch for the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing the intent is clearly to relegate the accomplishments of men to a historical footnote, while we celebrate a woman in charge of a multi-ethnic crew. The subtle message will be that things are so much better now. The sad truth about the space shuttle program is that the clothes have no emperor. Like the shuttle itself, NASA and its diverse workforce are going around in circles with no cohesive mission or vision. As July 20th approaches, I will remember the brave accomplishments of all the men who walked on the moon and tell my son about them once again. I will also pray for rain in Florida so the launch of the space shuttle Columbia will have to be rescheduled, and the anniversary of man's greatest accomplishment will remain untarnished.
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