sorry, but POLITICALLY, it's EXACTLY how it is
obama and his entire administration do NOT believe in american exceptionalism
instead, they do exactly as his sci-guy WROTE
they DE-DEVELOP
and they BOW
You believe the government can develop shuttles better than the private sector?
Listen, drop your paritsanship for just one second, and listen to how it is.
In Kennedy's time, NASA was new and full of people eager to make use of new advances in applied physics and engineering and who had an enemy in the Russians. Office politics within NASA were minimal and nobody on Congress would have dared gotten in the way of Kennedy's vision, because that meant they were communists, communists who wanted the Russians to win the space race and drop nukes on the United States from orbit. Democrat or Republican, anybody who got in the way of Kennedy's statement, "We choose to go to the moon," was perceived by the parties and by the general public as personally responsible for allowing the Russians to get into space and have access to all its theoretical military applications. Hence, when Kennedy unveiled his vision, there was no effective opposition to developing the tech that would get us to the moon as fast as possible.
So we got to the moon, and the Russians, both their space program and their society, were beginning to feel the strain of prolonged mis-management. The mad rush was over and NASA became relaxed, but the space program remained fundamentally important enough to America's identity and self-esteem to keep funneling massive amounts of money into it. NASA didn't have the same drive, anymore, however, and the focus and determination that got us to the moon was replaced by office politics.
If somebody hadn't gotten the credit they felt they deserved or the promotion or salary raise in pre-Moon landing times, then they swallowed it because they had a military mentality; success against the Soviet Union was more important than personal career advancement, because they perceived the fate of American society depended on it. After the moon landing and the floundering of Russia, the pay checks became more important than the technological progress. There were no more threats to national security -- nothing that could imperil the families, friends, and communities of the people who worked at NASA - so duty to the country was forgotten.
This lead to rivalries and amnosities comparable to the chaos at Disney before and after the Golden Age of Animation. Together with the general lack of motivation, technological progress has been slow; present, but slow. Hence, in thirty years, we haven't gone back to the moon, and the moons of Mars remain a pipe dream. Nobody in Congress or the executive branch really got on NASA's ass on this because nobody cared about Kenndy-esque visions of space travel as such (they'd already served their purpose -- the Soviet Union was broken spiritually and materially), they just didn't want to be accused of not caring about space travel by not funding NASA.
Bush tried to fix this problem by instituting important new programs; aka, a Kennedy-esque vision of returning to the Moon, then Mars. The hope was new ambitious projects would rally NASA.
Five years and ten billions dollars later and there have been no advancements. The second moon landing date already had to be pushed forward by several years, a blow, and technological improvements that were supposed to be incorporated in our next generation shuttle fleet aren't finished. We're no closer to getting to the moon or Mars than we were when Bush announced his plan.
Since NASA seems chronically unable to deliver, Obama has decided two things.
The first is that various private companies will be the ones to make our next shuttle fleet. These will mostly be government subsidized, although entrepenuers and philanthropists will play some role, but more importantly, they will have to compete for the government subsidies; NASA only competes against itself, which means it is always tanking or undermining its own projects whenever an administrator unfavorable to those projects gets his position, which is alot and tends to revolve more around personal interest than actual appreciation or understanding of the projects. This means when one company is developing a shuttle, the other company will be trying to make a better shuttle; maybe one with vastly improved fuel efficiency. Since we need a new shuttle fleet anyway, we might as well outsource it to the private sector. It's not like they can do a worse job than NASA, and there is a greater probability curve they can do better.
The second is that, as far as developing new space technology goes, NASA will focus on individual parts and pieces. Rather than create a
shuttle that can go to Mars, NASA will create a propulsion system that can go to Mars.
THEN we can see about putting together a structure that can be propelled to Mars.
This is called the "flexible strategy."
People have two criticisms of Obama's plan:
One, people say Obama is falsely assuming the commercial sector can even create shuttles. They say the commercial sector can't create shuttles. I say, given the availability of technology, there is no reason they can't do at least as good a job as NASA as long as they get the money, which they will receive. And they will appreciate it more than NASA, which has an inflated sense of entitlement and importance from its decades-spanning monopoly on space tech development. Bottomline, a subsidized commercial sector can create shuttles.
Two, people say Obama's plan lacks a Kennedy-esque vision. I kind of feel this one in my heart, but my logic says that Obama's choice is right because we don't have an institution capable of executing a Kennedy-esque vision anymore. There are no laws we can make that will make NASA more efficient; penalizing them for slow development just make them panic and do worse, like workers with no job security.