An Unsuitable Job For A Woman
This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon, and that made me curious how the anniversary is being celebrated on the right wing. So let us go then, you and I, and find out what they are up to.First up is our old friend Charles Krauthammer:
America's manned space program is in shambles. Fourteen months from today, for the first time since 1962, the U.S. will be incapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone into Earth orbit. We'll be totally grounded. We'll have to beg a ride from the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.
It won’t shock you to learn that Mr. Krauthammer is – as usual -- wrong. In fact, the United States was totally grounded from 1975 to 1981. We’d used up the last of our Saturn launch vehicles and couldn’t build more. The space shuttle was in development but engineering problems pushed its projected first launch back farther and farther. And we couldn’t hitch a ride into orbit with the Russians or Chinese, either – we weren’t welcome on board.
Embarrassingly, this lack of a manned launch vehicle resulted in the loss of the Skylab space station. NASA had planned to send the space shuttle up to boost Skylab into a higher orbit. But without a viable launch vehicle we could only watch its orbit decay and hope to God it didn’t land on anybody.
But of course facts aren’t important to Krauthammer’s analysis. The point he is making is the same one he’s always making -- that America is in decline, we are slouching toward Gomorrah, we are seeing the moment of our national greatness flicker.
It’s flickering, too, for Tom Piatak, who misses the good old days, when astronauts were all-American, all male and all white:
The contrast between the stoicism and resolve of the Apollo astronauts, and the tawdry emotionalism so prevalent today, could not be more stark: those men were interested in solving problems, not in getting in touch with their feelings. Since then, we have seen a lowering of standards across the board, from grade inflation and the dumbing down of tests and curricula in schools to a widespread acceptance of low standards, loose morals, coarse manners, slovenly dress, and trashy entertainment.
They were selected to go into space for the simple reason that they were the best men for the job, a criterion that today is often no longer enough, as Frank Ricci discovered. Today’s NASA seems as interested in trumpeting its commitment to multiculturalism and diversity as in the exploration of space, a commitment that would have struck the men who actually planned and achieved multiple landings on the moon as simply irrelevant to what they were doing.
Several things jump out here. First, the moth-eaten “Okie From Muskogee” schtick, harping on kids today, their slovenly dress, their shiftlessness, their lack of grit and patriotism, their loose morals, their rock-and-roll music. It is astonishingly stale, as if it was copied straight out of the Reader’s Digest circa 1970. Even the staunchest culture warriors moved on from this sort of thing decades ago. Second is the inversion of the conservative line from the Apollo era : most conservatives then were hostile to the idea of space exploration. Why, they repeatedly asked, are we wasting all this money in outer space? Why are the taxpayers being asked to fund a silly mission to collect moon rocks? Or as John Derbyshire put it just today:To spend 24 billion current dollars (I think it was) on a project of no practical value, is not the action of a mature commercial republic with a firm grip on its senses. It's more like the pyramid-building exploits of oriental despots.
Third, the assumption that promoting diversity in the astronaut corps leads to inferior astronauts. This makes sense only if you believe that white males are inherently superior to all others – something that all but the most right-wing commentators will quail at expressing openly. Certainly Armstrong and Aldrin were the best test pilots and fighter pilots of their day; but since women and minorities weren’t considered for such jobs, the pool of astronauts was – obviously – limited.
But today we live in a world where Col. Eileen Collins (pictured above) had the opportunity to compete for a job in the astronaut corps. She has commanded a number of space shuttle flights, including the first to launch after the Columbia disaster. I suspect she has enough "stoicism and resolve" to get the job done.
