Fresh ff: Why Obama Changed His Space Policy - “the reference to the NASA cuts on Obama’s Web site … It’s not there
For all of the comparisons people have made between Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy, there’s one area where Obama hasn’t really had the Kennedy thing down: the space program.
Obama tried to change that this weekend, but it sounds like it took some intervention from Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, the Senate’s only astronaut, to pull it off.
On Saturday, at a town hall meeting on the economy in Titusville, Fla., Obama seemed to respond to a surprising broadside from John McCain, who charged on Tuesday that Obama was prepared to let the space program stall out after the space shuttle is retired in 2010. Obama promised a “real vision for space exploration” by not only continuing the Constellation program — the new effort to return Americans to the moon and eventually go on to Mars — but also by reestablishing the 1960s-era National Aeronautics and Space Council “so that we can develop a plan to explore the solar system - a plan that involves both human and robotic missions, and enlists both international partners and the private sector.”
As McCain’s campaign correctly pointed out, though, Obama wasn’t always so enthused about the new moon program. Late last year, he had proposed funding his early education plan in part by “delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years,” as shown in this version of the plan preserved by the NASA Watch Web site.
Last week, Nelson, who flew on the space shuttle as a congressman in the 1980s, told me he had complained to Obama about his plan. It clearly would have hurt Florida’s economy — not the message you want to send at a town hall on the economy.
It’s probably one of the lesser-known compromises Obama has made as he tries to pull Democrats together for the general election. And don’t look for the reference to the NASA cuts on Obama’s Web site now. It’s not there anymore.