The Committee to Nuke Elysium

There certainly was audacity in 1961, when John F. Kennedy made his lunar pledge. The key line was not the crazy bit about landing a man on the moon, it was the hubristic promise to do so by 1970. If Wernher Von Braun had insisted the moon was unreachable before 1975, they probably would never have gone. Why? Because by 1975 Kennedy’s presidency would be ancient history. Some other guy would get all the glory as Old Glory was hammered into the lunar regolith.

Of course that happened anyway, but Kennedy’s reasoning must have been that, even in 1969, he would be able to bask in the glory of a successful moon shot.

It may simply be that space exploration is incompatible with US democracy. A Mars shot would take four presidential terms at least. No president will ask taxpayers to fund something he won’t be around to take credit for.

Another big problem is the legacy of some terrible decisions that left NASA with the expensive, dangerous space shuttle and a white-elephant space station that manages the feat of making space seem as dull as cardboard. The whole thing is a mess.

So where now? Probably nowhere. Expect the Augustine report to be quietly forgotten. After all, we’ve been here before. In 1989 George Bush Snr promised the moon and Mars too, and that came to naught. The problem with these visions is that they are too sane. Human space exploration requires a tinge of madness – that theatrical Kennedy hubris – to work.