{"id":13692,"date":"2007-11-23T11:30:20","date_gmt":"2007-11-23T16:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13692.html"},"modified":"2007-11-23T11:30:20","modified_gmt":"2007-11-23T16:30:20","slug":"candidates-outer-space-interests-take-a-turn-towards-the-substantive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/candidates-outer-space-interests-take-a-turn-towards-the-substantive\/","title":{"rendered":"Candidates’ outer-space interests take a turn towards the substantive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lately, presidential candidates have been fielding some odd questions when it comes to space — space travel, space invaders, space conspiracies, etc. Bill Richardson<\/a> talked recently about his intention, if elected, to open the classified files on the weather-balloon incident in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Rudy Giuliani<\/a> was asked a town-hall meeting whether he believes the United States is prepared, just in case, for an intergalactic attack. Dennis Kucinich<\/a>, of course, recently conceded during a debate that he believes he saw a UFO.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, this week, the space discussion took a turn towards the serious<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The major presidential candidates pummel each other daily on issues ranging from the Iraq war to health care. But when it comes to President Bush’s ambitious initiative to send humans back to the moon and on to Mars, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is all but alone in staking out a formal position — and it’s one that lends support to key aspects of the president’s effort.<\/p>\n

She initially outlined the need for a “robust” human spaceflight program last month during a Washington speech on science policy, despite being broadly critical of the Bush administration’s record on scientific issues.<\/p>\n

The question of future manned space exploration took on greater prominence this week when Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made clear that he is not enamored with NASA’s effort to build a new spacecraft to take astronauts to the moon and beyond.<\/p>\n

In a position paper on education unveiled in New Hampshire, Clinton’s rival advocated delaying for five years the program to build the new multibillion-dollar Constellation spacecraft and using the savings to fund a variety of education initiatives.<\/p>\n

Asked for a response, Clinton spokesman Isaac Baker said, “Senator Clinton does not support delaying the Constellation program and intends to maintain American leadership in space exploration.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Candidly, I should admit that I know very little about the Constellation program, and just how much it costs. Having said that, I’m fairly encouraged that leading candidates would explore a policy difference about investing quite a bit of money in a space-exploration initiative.
\n
\nBush may have gotten the ball rolling in 2005 with a plan for a new generation of spacecraft that can fly to the moon and perhaps to Mars, but most Republican presidential candidates seem to be leaning in Obama’s direction.<\/p>\n

When asked about their candidates’ positions on the moon-Mars project, a spokeswoman for Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) did not respond, while one for former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said, “I’m not sure anything is out there on this subject.”<\/p>\n

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s campaign responded by providing an article from the Florida Today newspaper that said: “During the first campaign visit to the Space Coast by a 2008 presidential candidate, Republican Mitt Romney said he supports Bush’s vision for space exploration and has no reason yet to propose a new direction.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a pretty interesting subject; perhaps reporters can dig in a little more on this. After all, the clock is ticking — as the WaPo noted, “[A]fter NASA’s three space shuttles are retired in late 2010, the United States will have no spacecraft capable of launching astronauts into orbit.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lately, presidential candidates have been fielding some odd questions when it comes to space — space travel, space invaders, space conspiracies, etc. Bill Richardson talked recently about his intention, if elected, to open the classified files on the weather-balloon incident in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Rudy Giuliani was asked a town-hall meeting whether he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}