Obama Success

Yes, Obama has had a success and I had thought it was a massive blunder at the time.  I vented my irritation at the President in a blog post.  However, events have come to pass that show great promise at lower cost.  No, not Obamacare but space exploration.

When NASA's Constellation Project was slashed so the president could expand the food stamp program and his doomed Stimulus, I was aghast.  The US had space superiority and now we were hitching rides on Russian Soyuz capsules.  The US space program looked to be a casualty of Obama's spending priorities.  As it happens, the private space companies are making leaps and bounds.  SpaceX is the standout with its Falcon rocket and Dragon space capsule; SpaceX is running resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) and will soon be able to shuttle astronauts for a fraction of the price of the space shuttles.  Orbital Science Corporation (OSC) is a big player in satellites but is aiming to also resupply the ISS with its Cygnus spacecraft.

What is truly funny about this is it fits what I have long said about most issues: get the government out and the prices will drop and more will get accomplished.  How did I end up on the wrong side of this argument?  Mostly, it is because space is still a government domain.  Even all this private activity is funded through government contracts.  Getting into space and bringing back something of value is still a ways off.  This is why space tourism is likely to be the first moneymaker for private companies (e.g. Virgin Galactic).  Eventually, we'll see mining operations on the moon and then elsewhere but that is still beyond the market.  But not for long.

The Mars One project has a hundred thousand volunteers to migrate to the red planet in 2023.  It would be a one way trip and yet there are plenty of applicants.  Even the founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, plans to die on Mars.

Here is the interesting point: Obama's success is a case where he defunded a government agency and let the private market take over.  This is precisely the opposite of what he has done with health care, the car companies, banks, mortgages, student loans, etc.  While all of these are seeing rising costs, NASA is seeing a drop in the price of resupply missions.  Perhaps the president could learn from this.