Addressing Congress on May 25, 1961, President Kennedy
challenged America and set a seemingly impossible goal- sending
a person to the moon by the end of the decade. Kennedy’s
ambitious dream was realized by the Apollo program, and, since
that time, manned space exploration has been an intrinsic part
of both America’s national character, and its vision of the
future. As a result, our retreat from the final frontier is a
clear illustration of the retrenchment accompanying the long,
slow, slide of national decline. The great retreat began with
President Obama’s decision in 2010 to kill the Constellation
program, which was supposed to be the successor to the now-
retired space shuttle, and a key component in our return to the
moon (as well as future missions to Mars). As Charles
Krauthammer has written, America’s manned space-flight program
essentially died that year “for want of $3 billion a year —
1/300th of [the 2009] stimulus package with its endless make-
work projects that will leave not a trace on the natio