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Trump’s Second Term Could Take Mankind to Mars

Posted on Friday, September 13, 2024
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by Andrew Shirley
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19 Comments
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Although inflation, the border crisis, and foreign wars are rightly the issues of top concern for voters in November’s presidential election, the stakes are also high for the future of the American space program.

In a post on X last week, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk stated his belief that “unless there is significant government reform, laws & regulations will keep getting worse every year until every great endeavor, from high-speed rail between our cities to making life multiplanetary, is effectively illegal.”

“Trump supports a government efficiency commission to allow great things to be done, Kamala does not,” Musk added. “We will never reach Mars if Kamala wins.”

Musk has repeatedly insisted that, with the right investment and focus on innovation, the United States could land a man on Mars before the decade is out. He specifically believes that if planned unmanned missions to Mars in two years go well, “the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years.”

After decades of glaring mismanagement from the White House and government bureaucrats, Musk deserves credit for revitalizing the American space program and once again looking to push the boundaries of human knowledge and exploration. But as he rightly observes, making Mankind an interplanetary species will still depend on the government not getting in the way.

The moon landing in 1969 was perhaps the greatest human scientific achievement in history. In subsequent decades, NASA’s Space Shuttle program and leadership in developing the International Space Station (ISS) kept the United States on the cutting edge of space exploration.

Since the early 2000s, however, things have largely stalled.

In January 2004, the Bush administration requested that NASA develop a new crewed space vehicle. The Space Shuttle was scheduled for decommissioning in 2010, and America needed a replacement vehicle. NASA ultimately came up with the Constellation Program, which was supposed to ensure Americans could still access the ISS and put them on a path to returning to the moon in early 2020.

However, in President Barack Obama’s 2011 budget request for NASA, he recommended the Constellation Program be eliminated. NBC News reported that the decision killed “a five-year, $9 billion effort to build new Orion spacecraft and Ares rockets.”

A year later, the Space Shuttle was finally retired, and American astronauts were forced to rely on Russian rockets to travel to the ISS. Instead of using Constellation, Obama recommended a strategy whereby commercial companies would take over low-earth missions while NASA focused on a manned Mars mission.

Obama reassured Americans that he was not abandoning space and was refocusing the nation toward a future Mars mission. However, according to space policy expert Casey Drier, going to Mars “was such a big problem. The money was so inadequate that it became almost worse than nothing…They said they were going to Mars but contributed almost nothing to that effort.”

Meanwhile, the first manned commercial rocket to successfully reach the ISS wouldn’t come until 2020 with the SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Demo-2 launch.

After taking office, Donald Trump broke this space malaise almost immediately. According to MIT Technology Review, “On December 11, 2017, Trump issued Space Policy Directive 1, which officially called for NASA to begin work on a human exploration program that would return astronauts to the surface of the moon.” Newly appointed NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine stated that the moon was a “proving ground” for “deep space missions” and an eventual Mars mission.

Equally consequential, on May 24, 2018, Trump issued “Space Policy Directive-2, Streamlining Regulations on Commercial Use of Space.” This directive empowered scientists to “cut through” piles of red tape and regulations impeding commercial spaceflight development. As the MIT Technology Review states, “The Trump administration has set things into turbo-drive, resulting in a flurry of new activities and opportunities for the commercial sector.”

On June 18th of that year, Trump also announced the reformation of the National Space Council to ensure America’s space policy wouldn’t stagnate again. Several months later, he formally established a United States Space Command, formally known as the Space Force. Until that point, space defense was left under the purview of the Air Force but lacked funding and strategic focus.

Trump’s space program was so successful that the Biden administration has largely left the overall organizational framework untouched. After taking office in 2021, Biden announced he would keep the reformed National Space Council and Trump’s ambitious space exploration timetable. Though liberals maligned the Space Force for years, Biden eventually applauded its creation.

However, while the Biden-Harris administration kept Trump’s framework, it has lacked the vision and ambition to drive the American space program forward and has bogged down companies like SpaceX in endless red tape. Following a recent Federal Aviation Administration decision that grounded most SpaceX rockets until late November, SpaceX stated in a lengthy blog post, “It takes longer to do the government paperwork to license a rocket launch than it does to design and build the actual hardware. This should never happen and directly threatens America’s position as the leader in space.”

The FAA’s justification for the delay was “environmental analysis,” which SpaceX called “absurd.”

Should Kamala Harris win and continue the policies of the Biden administration, America’s emerging space horizon could be eclipsed indefinitely by red tape and bloated bureaucracy. A second Trump term, meanwhile, could be humanity’s ticket to Mars.

Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.

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PaulE
PaulE
27 days ago

The author kind of misses the general point Elon Musk was making. Musk was referring to the fact that if we, as a nation, continue down this path towards the Democrats’ goal of Marxism, ALL innovation, not just Musk’s planned effort for Mars, would cease to exist because government would essentially kill it all via layer upon layer of regulations and confiscatory tax policies.

Authoritarian governments, which is what the Democrats desperately want to replace what is left of our republic with as fast as possible, ALL end up stifling innovation and free market forces in favor of centralized government control of all assets, industries and capital. Everything becomes a government-controlled enterprise under what the Democrats want to do. Which means it is poorly run, costs many times more than the private sector could do the exact same thing for, and frequently the projects devolve into a glorified circular money transfer mechanism designed solely to enrich the top tier government officials further. This is how every Marxist style government works in practice when you look under the hood. The so-called “elected leaders” become fabulously wealthy via the systematic looting of the private wealth of the nation into their personal pockets. Just look at the net worth of leaders like Putin, Xi, Maduro and all the others to see how Marxism benefits only the top of the government food chain.

Thus, under the desired system of government the Democrats want enacted here, which is simply Marxism dressed up with a very thin layer of so-called social / economic justice and climate change language to lull the uniformed and ignorant public into voting for it, there would be no means outside of government control to do anything that may either move civilization forward or up-lift humanity through innovation. Yes, all forms of innovation would be buried under an ever-growing mountain of endless regulations and confiscatory taxation.

Bob L.
Bob L.
27 days ago

Space exploration does not interest me at all, in fact I think there are still more than enough unknowns right here on Earth to be discovered that would be more beneficial – that is if researchers would work on something other than gain of function biological weapons they can’t control…

Glenn Lego
Glenn Lego
27 days ago

If possible could Trump send some democrats to the sun? He should do it at night so it would not be so hot!

anna hubert
anna hubert
27 days ago

Yes and yes ,make it a penal colony. All criminals, cartels, ship them there and make them fend for themselves No technology, just bare hands.. It was done in N.America and Australia, why not there?

Karla
Karla
27 days ago

Biden and Harris perusing the space program? No, they’re too busy wastefully spending money to make American’s lives miserable.

phoenix
phoenix
27 days ago

God I hope not.
We’ve really not the money for pie in the sky crap. Maybe later once we’ve fixed the country, culture, finances, and education

Sallo
Sallo
27 days ago

Well, that doesn’t make me excited.

johnh
johnh
27 days ago

What is purpose SpaceForce dept. that Trump formed & what do they do? I never see anything on media about this & wonder if anyone else on this board does?

John Shipway
John Shipway
27 days ago

What I really enjoyed from the moon landing back in 1969 which happened as I attended summer school classes in early high school, was how God actually took time off to provide a breeze on the moon just for the unfurling of the American Flag.
Touching huh?

Stephen Russell
Stephen Russell
27 days ago

Hope so & Mission will need
Lunar Base
Orbital Outpost
Shuttleship to Mars

Robert Zuccaro
Robert Zuccaro
27 days ago

We have to rely on Russia instead of our own vehicles.. need I say more?

Robert
Robert
27 days ago

Red Tape or the Red Planet? Barsoom here we come!

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