The Tea Party Movement supports the continuation of space exploration and believes it to the long term strategic benefit of this nation to maintain our superiority in space.

Argument

In 1957 the Russians launched Sputnik and the US found itself behind in the space age.  President Eisenhower and then President Kennedy placed their full support behind the exploration of space.  President Kennedy made it a priority to land a man on the moon.   American ingenuity put multiple men on that moon commencing in 1969. 

Many will argue that the benefits of space exploration were the raw research and the many special metal alloys and other lightweight material that aided this country and its manufacturers to build smaller and smaller, more powerful computer equipment, lighter cars, etc.   It isn't that they would be wrong.  This country certainly did benefit from the byproducts of space exploration but these might best be called positive but unintended consequences.  What about the original goal and why did Eisenhower think it important to emphasize science in American classrooms and to push the space program to beat the Russians into space?  This was not simply an Olympic type race with only the pride of finishing first on the line.   There were reasons Eisenhower did not want the Russians to achieve an overwhelming advantage in space.  

Had our enemies achieved a superiority in space rather than us in the 1960's would we have been able to maintain the space frontier as non-military?  As a civilian veteran of the Cold War, I state emphatically that had the Russians achieved a superiority in space, the agreement to maintain space as non-military would have been as worthless as the pact between Stalin and Hitler.   So, with this in mind, I ask the question in a different way, "If America surrenders its superiority in space and becomes dependent upon hitching rides to the Space Station will the frontier of space remain void of military objectives?"  Will our satellite communications become vulnerable to those to whom we surrender our position in the Space Program?   Is it likely that our nation could become hostage to a rogue dictator or some other leader intent on doing this nation harm?  

I don't hear others talking about this.   I only hear the arguments regarding the fiscal consequences of continuing our research and maintaining our leadership in space.   It is clear that space exploration and research is expensive but the strategic risk of abandoning NASA should also be taken into consideration or it will be at our peril.