Barack Obama's Space Plan: Flip-flop?

Obama in January.

Obama in August.

In January, it was kosher to pull money from the space program to fund schools in the inner city. After all, he had to distinguish himself from his fellow Democrats by appealing to the one demographic most likely to give him an edge in the elections–inner cities.

Quoted from the January position paper:

Obama will support the development of this vital new platform to ensure that the United States’ reliance on foreign space capabilities is limited to the minimum possible time period.

In the wake of nationalistic pride generated by the Chinese hosting the Olympics, the issue of the space race has once again come to the forefront. China’s spoken intent is to put a man back on the moon by 2020. The USA performed the same feat with less advanced technology, going from space in 1959 to a moon landing in 1969. With China’s resource and technology base, isn’t it fair to assume a moon landing within twelve years?

Quote from the August position paper:

Speeding the Next-Generation Vehicle: Obama will expedite the development of the Shuttle’s successor systems for carrying Americans to space so we can minimize the gap. This will be difficult; underfunding by the Bush administration has left NASA with limited flexibility to accelerate the development of the new systems.

Obama accuses the Bush administration of underfunding the space program. To make that statement truly accurate, say: “Bush and the Democratically controlled Congress have hamstrung the space program with successive budget cuts.” I find it odd that Obama accuses Bush of that, when he was going to do the same thing, as illustrated in this education plan [emphasis mine]:

Barack Obama’s early education and K-12 plan package costs about $18 billion per year.  He will maintain fiscal responsibility and prevent an increase in the deficit by offsetting cuts and revenue sources in other parts of the government.  The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years, using purchase cards and negotiating power of the government to reduce costs of standardized procurement, auctioning surplus federal property, and reducing the erroneous payments identified by the Government Accountability Office, and closing the CEO pay deductibility loophole.  The rest of the plan will be funded using a small portion of the savings associated with fighting the war in Iraq.

Which is it? Are we expediting the new crew vehicle for the space program, or are we delaying it five years in the name of an education program?

Now that Obama is mainstream, language that touches even tangentially on Welfare is going to be a sore sport for swing voters in typically red states. Obama must do something to counter the Chinese ambitions for their own space program, so he releases a slightly modified position paper. 

Neither one of these position papers amounts to anything more than arm waving. How is Mr. Obama going to expedite the new crew vehicle? Can he promise the American public that our space infrastructure won’t rot away while we funnel money into enabling the poor to stay poor? What will he say when our skilled aeronautical engineers and technicians are laid off from NASA, and they find themselves paid high salaries in China, Japan, and Russia?

Quite frankly, our lack of manned space delivery systems couldn’t come at a worse time.  Who knew that we would be hitch hiking to LEO in a Russian space capsule that uses forty year old technology?