How can funds be used elsewhere?
Introduction:
The Space Programme in the United States has always been important although one cannot observe any real benefits especially in the last years when the Space Shuttle programme came to an end in a rather ignoble manner.
With funding of 18 billion dollars a year, the Space programme is surely one of the most deleterious and wasteful regarding the whole country budget. Notwithstanding all this there have been considerable benefits in the past especially with the programme on the moon and suchlike but still, funding could certainly be used elsewhere with much more profitable results.
If funds were to be used to bring about more educational facilities for the younger generation and for the more emarginated sectors of society, then surely this would increase its potential by a hundredfold.
Clearly, Dr Martin Luther King makes the case for improved racial equality in his excellent Letter from Birmingham Jail. This is a fully espoused argument on the inequalities that are present against blacks in the early 1960’s where Southern states enjoyed making blacks feel completely disenfranchised and put in their place without much hope of any advancement.
King argues that the federal government should provide all possible opportunities for those blacks who are promising and can definitely make the grade in life. One can imagine what the funding for the space programme could achieve if this were the case.
King is also very direct against the white moderate section of the population who seem to argue that maintaining law and order is singularily much more important than the freedom and liberty of the negroe.
“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection”.
This quote is intriguing as it shows us that the white moderate American will certainly not do anything to help the Negro cause, in fact he will do nothing at all. This irks King as one can only speculate if a tiny proportion of funds which were available for the Space programme could be diverted to the Civil Rights cause, the pain felt by the emarginated Negro would be substantially less at least.
Other areas which may be funded by the Space programme include the health and science research sectors. For several parts of the said space programme are wasted on meaningless projects as aptly described in the Library of Congress document. It would be far far better if the funds were used to explore some cures for deadly diseases such as cancer and these funds can be applied accordingly to produce such cures as need be.
Occasionally universities and other higher education institutions complain of lack of funding for their research projects which are left out in the cold. Now one can imagine what an enormous difference the funds for the space programme would mean if these were diverted towards educational needs and other similar research projects. However it does not look likely that any of these funds will be arriving sometime soon as the space programme seems to be gobbling up all of the funds which are available and this is clearly apparent in the way NASA operates.
Consequentially one can observe that funding for science and other programmes would benefit substantially from the Space Programme budget. This will also mean that the other programmes such as racial equality and education would not only benefit hugely but will also expand at a rate hitherto unseen beforehand.
In the article ‘Debating the Future of United States Space Policy, the author speaks about the importance of several critical programmes and makes the case rather eloquently in this regard. There is also a clear bias towards the space programme which perhaps is not so important although it is stated that the Bush Administration did its utmost to use the Space programme to gain some sort of competitive advantage with regards to policy although this meant that several billions of dollars continued to be pumped into this same programme.
In his equally excellent article, Billetteri observes that there does not seem to be much enthusiasm to continue funding the space programme by the Obama administration. In fact this quote really says it all:
“NASA's human spaceflight program is stuck in low orbit, held back by budget constraints, political bickering, competing visions and daunting technical challenges. A White House-commissioned panel has warned that the program is on an “unsustainable trajectory” because of funding limitations, and plans to build a new generation of rockets, return to the Moon and eventually go to Mars are under intense scrutiny. Meanwhile, the impending termination of the Space Shuttle could leave a seven-year gap during which the United States could have to rely on Russia to ferry astronauts to space. The future of NASA's human spaceflight program — including whether to build a lunar settlement — rests heavily on whether the Obama administration presses for more space funding”.
However more funding for space programmes would definitely indicate that there would be more billions being spent for a cause where not much is to be achieved. It would be far better if the funds used were to go to more deserving programmes as already argued and where the problems of politics are perhaps farther away. The financial qualms on the space programme appear to be rather large but in any case this administration seems to be quite reluctant to press forward in this regard.
Works Cited:
Debating the Future of US Space Policy; Academy of US Arts and sciences, Retrieved from:
http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.lib.utah.edu/science/article/pii/S0265964609000952
Billetteri T: Human Spaceflight: Retrieved from: http://library.cqpress.com.ezproxy.lib.utah.edu/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2009101600&type=hitlist&num=0
King MLK: Letter from Birmingham Jail: Retrieved from: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
