Liberals love pouring money in federal program, except for the worthwhile ones. Douglas MacKinnon calls on Donald Trump to reverse Barack Obama’s retreat from Space.

[John] Kennedy [said]: “…We mean to be a part of it — we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond … Our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us … to become the world’s leading space-faring nation.”

Well, look at us now. The United States of America has no manned space program, and we are reduced to paying the Russians more than $70 million per seat — and sometimes begging them behind closed doors — to transport our astronauts to a space station built primarily with American tax dollars.

Both the first man (and American) to walk on the moon and the last man (and American) to walk on the moon heavily criticized the shortsightedness of Obama.

Said the late Neil Armstrong in part: “… For the United States, the leading space-faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second- or even third-rate stature.”

Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, wrote in an Orlando Sentinel guest column in 2012, regarding Obama’s “abdication of leadership”: “…[O]ver the past four years, Obama has resorted to leading from behind and asks Americans to settle for a new normal that diminishes our position in the world. Not only is he willing to sacrifice the United States’ pre-eminence in space exploration, but he seems unconcerned that our economic and national security might falter as well.”

As we close out 2016, the leaders of the People’s Republic of China and Russia — with both nations announcing plans to establish manned bases on the moon — know that no nation on Earth is more dependent upon their satellites in low and geosynchronous orbit for their national and economic security, than the United States. And that is why both of those nations continually war-game how to destroy the very satellites that ensure our safety.

Talk of spending well more than $100 billion in American tax dollars to send astronauts to Mars to plant a flag may sound worthwhile, or even romantic to some, but it’s wasted talk and certainly wasted money for now.

Job one has to be to restart an American manned space program and then to protect our interests from low Earth orbit to the surface of the moon.

To do otherwise would not be in the best interest of the national security of our nation.

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