The Obama Administration drastically descaled NASA’s exploration program and reoriented the agency toward international collaboration – paving the way for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) space exploratory and warfare development.
NASA’s globalist revamp at the direction of the Obama White House was nothing short of an astronomical failure.
Obama White House senior advisor John Holdren said: “Many of us, including the president, including myself, including (NASA Administrator Charles) Bolden, believe that it’s not too soon to have preliminary conversations about what involving China in that sort of cooperation might entail,” addressing future NASA missions before a Congressional committee in 2011.
After overseeing the cancellation of NASA’s Constellation Program – dedicated to building new rockets and spaceships capable of returning astronauts to the moon – NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told Al Jazeera that then-President Obama wanted his agency to instead focus on embracing the Muslim world: “Perhaps foremost, he [President Obama] wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.”
The Obama Administration also elevated NASA’s Earth Sciences department – primarily committed to fighting global warming. Believing climate alarmists had hijacked NASA’s true function, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) insistently questioned Obama’s Earth science emphasis. “In the last 6 years… we’ve seen earth sciences increase 41 percent, and we’ve seen exploration and space operation – what should be the core mission, what NASA exists to do – decrease 7.6 percent. That in my view is disproportional,” Cruz said in 2015.
The Obama-ordered grounding of American orbital launches and retirement of the Space Shuttle in July 2011 crippled American space capabilities, forcing NASA to pay Russia for trips to space aboard its Soyuz spacecraft for – most recently – $90 million a seat.
And these funds, at great cost to taxpayers, are fueling dangerous collaboration between the CCP and Russia.
The United States Intelligence community has expressed alarm over the space warfare capabilities of both Russia and China – particularly their ability to jam and/or destroy US satellites in orbit.
The congressionally commissioned 2019 US-China Economic and Security Review Commission found that: “China views space as a critical U.S. military and economic vulnerability, and has fielded an array of direct-ascent, cyber, electromagnetic, and co-orbital counterspace weapons capable of targeting nearly every class of U.S. space asset.”
The report concludes: “It may be difficult for the United States to deter Beijing from using these weapons due to China’s belief the U.S. has a greater vulnerability in space.”
Russian officials recently announced plans to team up with the CCP on lunar orbiter and landing missions. Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College, believes the agreement indicates the emergence of a China-Russia space alliance: “China has the political will to follow through with space plans, regardless of timetables, and Russia is motivated to cooperate with them through its sole strategic purpose – make things difficult for democracies in general and the US in particular.”
The partnership further cements the Chinese Space Program’s European ties. Beginning in 2018, a handful of European Space Agency astronauts began training for missions to China’s space station. Chinese state media reported the following year that China, Russia, and Europe agreed to establish a joint scientific research station at the moon.
But President Trump is taking steps to reverse this.
He established the US Space Force (USSF) as the sixth branch of the armed forces to combat nations like China seeking to challenge the United States in space.
Emblematic of President Trump’s recommitment to ‘America First’ space dominance, Elon Musk’s SpaceX – created to return human space flight to the United States – launched American rocket from American soil for the first time since 2011 on Saturday, May 30th.
President Trump and Vice President Pence attended the company’s spacecraft launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, marking the first time in history a private company sent astronauts into orbit.
While violent Antifa riots erupt across major US cities, the SpaceX launch presents an alternate future: one of America-First manufacturing that benefits American workers and American innovation juxtaposed to racial division and the breakdown of law and order – predicated upon a robust and inventive national economy.
