There’s a wide-open race for the US Senate in Illinois this year as incumbent Republican Peter Fitzgerald is retiring after a single term. This has attracted over a dozen candidates but, as the Chicago Sun-Times reports Monday, many of them are in agreement in their opposition to the new Bush space policy. All seven Democrats and two of the half-dozen Republican candidates are opposed to the plan, but for different—yet predictable—reasons. The Democrats are opposed because they feel the funding devoted to such a plan would be better spent on social programs. The Republicans, on the other hand, think the money simply shouldn’t be spent at all.
The article misses an interesting angle. One of the Republican candidates quoted in the article in support of the plan is Dr. Chirinjeev Kathuria, who said that NASA needs “high-profile, high-concept goals”. It turns out this is the same Chirinjeev Kathuria who was one of the founders and investors in MirCorp, the company that tried to commercialize the Russian space station Mir several years ago and is now trying to establish a foothold in the space tourism business. (As of midday Monday the web site for MirCorp was returning an error message in Dutch.) It would have been interesting for the the Sun-Times reporter to dig into this a bit and see if Kathuria’s views are shaped in any way by his MirCorp experience, or what role he felt commercial interests could play in the new space initiative.
Democrats will oppose Bush’s space policy simply because it was Bush who proposed it. Had Gore been President and proposed exactly the same policy, the Democrats would be trumpeting it to the high heavens (with the Republicans trying to tear it down).
This is nothing new, of course. Two hundred years ago, members of the Federalist Party criticized the Lewis and Clark Expedition, simply because it was Thomas Jefferson’s idea.
Since Anaxagoras is correct about the Democrats and Republicans (their squabbling often reminds me of the old Mad magazine cartoon: “Spy v Spy”)doesn’t that suggest that space advocates need to find ways to encourage bi-partisan space initiatives?
In my opinion, the proving ground for the Bush space vision will arrive in January 2009.
Politics is politics- you’ll have a hard time at best trying to change the nature of the beast.
A better idea is to stop wasting effort playing political games and move space exploration into the private sector.