Over the last 150,000 years or more, human exploration of Earth has yielded new homes, livelihoods, know how, and resources as well as improved standards of living and increased family security. Government has directly and indirectly played a role in encouraging exploration efforts. Private groups and individuals take additional initiatives to explore newly discovered or newly accessible lands and seas. Based on their specific historical experience, Americans can expect that benefits comparable to those sought and won in the past also will flow from their return to the Moon, future exploration of Mars, and the long reach beyond. To realize such benefits, however, Americans must continue as the leader of human activities in space. No one else will hand them to us without requiring a huge economic or political price.
With a permanent resumption of the exploration of deep space, one thing is certain: our efforts will be as significant as those of our ancestors as they migrated out of Africa and into a global habitat. Further, a permanent human presence away from Earth provides another opportunity for the expansion of free institutions, with all their attendant rewards, as humans face new situations and new individual and societal challenges.
Returning to the Moon first and as soon as possible meets the requirements for an American space policy that maintains deep space leadership, as well as providing major new scientific returns. Properly conceived and implemented, returning to the Moon prepares the way to go to and land on Mars. This also can provide an infrastructure for space exploration in which freedom-loving peoples throughout the world can participate as active partners.
Again, if we abandon leadership in deep space to the any other nation or group of nations, particularly a non-democratic regime, the ability for the United States and its allies to protect themselves and liberty for the world will be at great risk and potentially impossible. To others would accrue the benefits—psychological, political, economic, and scientific—that the United States harvested as a consequence of Apollo's success 40 years ago. This lesson has not been lost on our ideological and economic competitors.
American leadership absent from space? Is this the future we wish for our progeny? I think not. Again, future elections offer the way to get back on the right track.
Sent from my iPad
With a permanent resumption of the exploration of deep space, one thing is certain: our efforts will be as significant as those of our ancestors as they migrated out of Africa and into a global habitat. Further, a permanent human presence away from Earth provides another opportunity for the expansion of free institutions, with all their attendant rewards, as humans face new situations and new individual and societal challenges.
Returning to the Moon first and as soon as possible meets the requirements for an American space policy that maintains deep space leadership, as well as providing major new scientific returns. Properly conceived and implemented, returning to the Moon prepares the way to go to and land on Mars. This also can provide an infrastructure for space exploration in which freedom-loving peoples throughout the world can participate as active partners.
Again, if we abandon leadership in deep space to the any other nation or group of nations, particularly a non-democratic regime, the ability for the United States and its allies to protect themselves and liberty for the world will be at great risk and potentially impossible. To others would accrue the benefits—psychological, political, economic, and scientific—that the United States harvested as a consequence of Apollo's success 40 years ago. This lesson has not been lost on our ideological and economic competitors.
American leadership absent from space? Is this the future we wish for our progeny? I think not. Again, future elections offer the way to get back on the right track.
Sent from my iPad
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