A Sputnik Moment

This last week in his State of the Union Address, Obama, trying to claim the mantle of JFK, and sound Reaganesque all at the same time, referred to the crisis of our time as "a Sputnik moment." In the process he spoke a lot about "investment" (code word for more out of control deficit spending), and not only did he not sound like Ronald Reagan, he failed to make the connection between himself and John F. Kennedy.

In the dark days of the Cold War the Soviet Union launched the first man made satellite, Sputnik 1, into orbit in 1957, and on April 12, 1961, they again beat the United States to the punch putting the first man in space. In response Kennedy challenged America to be the first to put a man on the moon. It was a rousing speech that ignited not only patriotic fervor, but American ingenuity to develop such a program and successfully carry it out.

Obama, trying to invoke the memory of Kennedy to restart his failing presidency, could hardly have chosen a more inappropriate comparison. In his two very long years as president he has gutted NASA's budget and made its top priority to improve relations with Muslims by making them feel good about their non-contributions to science.

Politics aside, NASA and the entire space program is one of the greatest examples of why America is the greatest nation on earth. Forty-two years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the moon's surface, while several other nations including China have slowly found their way into space flight, no one else has ever even considered going to the moon.

This passed week is an important week in the memory of America's space program. It was on January 27, 1967, that we had our first tragedy with the Apollo 1 fire. Apollo was the program designed to go to the moon and was using the first three-manned space capsule. Astronauts Gus Grissom, America's most experienced space flyer, Ed White, the first American to "walk" in space, and Roger Chaffee, on his first space mission, climbed into the capsule for a rehearsal countdown. Somewhere in the 100% oxygen atmosphere of the capsule a spark ignited and a shout came over the radio from Ed White, "Fire." In less than 30 seconds the conflagration turned the capsule into a charred wreck and three American heroes were lost.

January 28, 1986 was another tragic day in NASA history when the Challenger space shuttle blew up 73 seconds after takeoff. President Reagan was scheduled to give his State of the Union address that evening, but postponed it in order to speak to the American people and comfort the nation in the deaths of seven astronauts "who had slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."

The space program would suffer another setback when the Columbia shuttle disintegrated over Texas upon re-entry on February 1, 2003. NASA, and America, would overcome all three disasters to prove to the world that there is nothing that can stop the adventurous, pioneering spirit of a free people.

This was never more clearly illustrated than when an oxygen tank blew the side off of Apollo 13 on its way to the moon. On April 13, 1970, the radio crackled at the Johnson Space Center and Commander James Lovell reported, "Houston, we've had a problem." The problem became how to slingshot the space capsule around the moon and send it back to earth using only the Lunar Module engine. The Command Module was essentially one giant computer, but what is so amazing about it is that the technology, only 41 years ago, was so archaic, that today you have more memory in a laptop computer than they had in their space capsule. They had to figure out their trajectory by hand using slide rules. And they did it.

It is my opinion that to date in the history of the world, landing on the moon is the crowning achievement of mankind. When Neil Armstrong took "one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind," he simply surpassed every other achievement ever made by man in any other condition or situation in all recorded time. It is not insignificant that it was America that did this. A free people in a nation built on Christian principles, honoring God with their lives and their history, accomplished what no one else has done, nor is likely to do for a long time to come.

When the Soviets put their first cosmonaut into space, Yuri Gagarin returned to earth and very sarcastically said, "I didn't see God up there." What a contrast to Apollo 8, the first spacecraft to ever leave earth's orbit and completely lose contact with the earth as it went behind the moon. Before signing off on Christmas Eve 1968, astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders sent a message to the world that God is up there. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," they read and continued through the first nine verses of Genesis 1.

The godless Soviet Union is no more, while God-fearing America continues to thrive. Tragically, our future as a free nation is today in danger. The Marxists of the Obama regime, aided by the leftist socialists of the Democrat Party, are endeavoring to enslave our free society with massive bureaucracy and unsustainable national debts, which are destroying our economy, and will change forever our country as we know it.

The answer to this Sputnik Moment is not more "investment" in America's future bankruptcy; it is overturning the Obama agenda that seeks to "change" America by ignoring the Constitution and spending us into oblivion. The answer is a return to Constitutional government, fiscal responsibility, and the God of our Founding Fathers.