Exploring

America's national myth (this is not a criticism - every country has one and ours is worthy) is that of the Frontier. Unfortunately, since the space shuttle Challenger exploded and broke apart in 1986, every President and Congress has shied away from the expense and risks of leaving Low Earth Orbit.

President George W. Bush came closest, but not close enough, to returning us to space. He spoke fine words about a pernament station on the Moon, as well as about a mission to Mars, but failed to ask for sufficient funds to get the job properly started, let alone done. Now President Obama has abandoned any idea of serious space exploration for a decade - probably much more.

Speaking to the Winter Meeting of the American Astronomical Society on January 5, 2010 in Washington DC, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (a former Astronaut) said:

"If you told me back in in 1980 as a young astronaut candidate that we wouldn't be back on the moon today, I would have told you that you were smoking dope. Let me say that again: if you'd told me that we wouldn't be back on the moon today, I would have told you that you were smoking some bad stuff.

I thought I was going up on the shuttle and coming back to train to go to the moon. We became risk averse after the space shuttle Challenger, and we have not recovered from that. We're going to drop satellites into the ocean periodically. Human mistakes are going to happen. we don't want to plan for this: we want to work to avoid this.

But we can't be afraid. We need to take risks to move forward."

Space exploration is a driver of technology, meets our emotional need to explore the frontier, provides good jobs at home and, not coincidentally, inspires the young to take up well paying careers in science and technology.

Let's go to the Moon and to Mars. Starting now!