Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the state of humanity would be much better had Richard Nixon had continued the space program, and his successors had followed. Instead of fighting a war on terror we would be racing against each other for the stars. The Moon would have people living on it, Mars would be being colonized as this is written and humanity would be mining the asteroids. The economic might such a environment would create, would demand tens of millions of well educated, well paid people, in every field of human endeavor. The trickle down effect of those well paid people buying the production of everyone else would have enriched people in every industry. For the amount of money we pay for Obama’s vacations, we could be doing all these things, had we been investing that money from the 1970’s. Instead, our government has used exponentially more money to send our children to die and be wounded in the desert, spent trillions bailing out the too big to fail banking system, inflated bubble after bubble to create the appearance of growth, and have installed a surveillance state.
The only government spending that has ever paid a real dividend is the space program. Our world today is largely the result of technological spin offs resulting from it. Everything from the digital revolution and cell phones, to the Temperpedic mattress, are directly the result of the space program. So much of what we take for granted, we have, because of that spending way back in the 1960s. Since then the amount of money spent on the space program has shrunk, while the vision has become more and more myopic, until today Obama has set NASA’s priority… to make Muslims feel good about their contributions to space exploration.
In the 1960’s the US had ambitious plans to build a Moon base and go to Mars. That would have led to countless spin off technologies. Spin offs that, as shown by history, would have created destabilizing businesses. Those would in turn kick off cycle after cycle of creative destruction, (the only real source of economic growth in an economy). Those cycles of creative destruction would have put countless people to work, around the world in ever higher paying, stable jobs, supporting that endeavor. There would have been opportunities for adventurous people to man those missions and take those chances. Opportunities would abound for scientifically minded people to build the hardware and mathematically logic oriented people to write the software.
Had the US continued the space race, the USSR would have been bankrupted much earlier… or they would have competed. Either way… the single minded absorption of our leaders how to most effectively end life on the planet, would have been turned to expanding humanity’s sphere of influence in the solar system. Each advancement would lead to the next. Driving humanity from the Moon, to Mars, then the Main belt of the asteroids for needed resources. The result would be that the likelihood of humanity becoming extinct would have largely been eliminated.
There would be no need for the war on terror, because the huge gobs of money that have gone to those regimes that inculcate the most violent interpretation of Islam, would have had to turn their attention to catching up with the US and Russia, (or USSR), in the colonization of space. Instead of cutting off the heads of infidels and Jews, those who seek Islamic global domination would have to hire them, so they could get off planet too, else risk being left behind. They would have spent all that money on building the infrastructure and technology, or buying it, to get off planet. There would be none left for expensive war.
The boon to humanity would not have stopped there. In addition to creating tens of thousands, perhaps millions of high paying good jobs, an elevation of the standard of living the world over, protecting the human race from extinction for any number of reasons, and undercutting the reason for the war on terror… had we continued on the path Kennedy put us on, young people would have a grand vision to look forward to. Instead of the fatalism, driven by their lack of feeling they have a stake in it all, our young people would have something to strive for… rather than doing drugs, creating fatherless children, traveling across the planet to engage in Jihad and becoming dependents of the state.
Sadly, Nixon hated Kennedy and the space program as well. Nixon had no vision, other than his naked political interests, and those didn’t include advancing Kennedy’s legacy. He instead used the money he had “saved” from the space program to create the EPA. A total catastrophe for the American economy. A catastrophe that resulted in a diminished standard of living, lower expectations, a fatalistic attitude for our children, and the rise of the bubble economy to hide the fact. The last 40 years could have been years of progress, excitement and technological advancement, like the human race has never seen before. But in their infinite wisdom, our leaders thought a better use of that money, was to create generational poverty through welfare state capitalism, enrich Wall street bankers at the cost to the rest of the economy, build nuclear weapons, fight needless wars, usurp unconstitutional authority, prop up dictators, set up a surveillance state, etc… And now, for our leaders to take hundred million dollar vacations. Yup, the world would have been a much better place had our leaders spent all that money on the productive use of space. But hindsight is 20-20, and our leaders are who they are… too bad we all suffer for it.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
