raisinbran20 asked
There have long been deluded people who believe that the moon landing was a hoax, but these new accusers are supposed to be mainstream journalists and respected former NASA historians. Of course, what they mean is that the president isn't serious--that this is just a reelection ploy in a reelection year. This is a preposterous claim, to anyone familiar with space policy and its history. With the possible exception of Jack Kennedy's moon program (and even that is highly doubtful), no space policy has ever been one on which public votes were cast-- other than possibly in districts that directly benefited from it, such as Houston, Texas, Huntsville, Ala., and the area around Cape Canaveral in Florida. Even in the latter cases, it's not clear that it's ever been a dominant issue in any election. Some might argue that, while Texas and Alabama are in the bag for the president this year, Florida is a swing state on which the election notoriously hinged the last time, and a new space initiative could bring it firmly into the president's column. But it's not necessary to announce a visionary space policy to do so. It would have been sufficient to give lip service to continuing the space shuttle and space station programs, because those constituencies' primary interest is in jobs, not planets. Well, actually, there is another exception to the rule of space having no impact on elections, and a clear (and negative) one. Former Apollo astronaut Harrison 'Jack' Schmitt was, for a time, a U.S. Senator from New Mexico, his home state. That time didn't last long, because he was perceived by his constituents as being too interested in Mars, and not sufficiently interested in the Land of Enchantment. His winning opponent's campaign slogan was 'What on earth has Jack Schmitt done for us'? No one has ever won an election in similar circumstances. To the degree that we have empirical data on the matter, support of visionary space programs is not a vote getter, but a v
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