Here is Obama's statement on the Mars Curiosity rover landing.
Tonight, on the planet Mars, the United States of America made history.Here is what two-faced Obama is doing behind the scenes.
The successful landing of Curiosity – the most sophisticated roving laboratory ever to land on another planet – marks an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future. It proves that even the longest of odds are no match for our unique blend of ingenuity and determination.
Tonight’s success, delivered by NASA, parallels our major steps forward towards a vision for a new partnership with American companies to send American astronauts into space on American spacecraft. That partnership will save taxpayer dollars while allowing NASA to do what it has always done best – push the very boundaries of human knowledge. And tonight’s success reminds us that our preeminence – not just in space, but here on Earth – depends on continuing to invest wisely in the innovation, technology, and basic research that has always made our economy the envy of the world.
I congratulate and thank all the men and women of NASA who made this remarkable accomplishment a reality – and I eagerly await what Curiosity has yet to discover.
The Obama administration, however, has no plans to continue in like vein. Far from it. It has canceled NASA’s plans for joint Mars missions with the Europeans in 2016 and 2018 and is proposing to butcher the program budget.
The figures speak for themselves. This year’s NASA Mars exploration budget is $587 million. The administration is proposing to cut that to $360.8 million in fiscal year 2013, $227.7 million in 2014, and $188.7 million in 2015, a level that would effectively put the nation out of the Mars exploration business.
If America is to remain the vanguard of humanity’s reach into space, we need to reject such folly.
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