Trump's Big CON: It's All About the Show, "Fly Me to the Moon" Edition

"The oratory was lofty, the setting, before the space shuttle Discovery, was fitting. Guests included the secretaries of state, transportation and commerce, and the chief executives of some of the largest aerospace companies in the world, including Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

During the first meeting of the reconstituted National Space Council last week, Vice President Pence vowed in soaring rhetoric that the United States would not only return astronauts to the moon, but that 'we will push the boundaries of human knowledge. We will blaze new trails into the great frontier. And we will once again astonish the world as we boldly go to meet our future in the skies and stars.' . .


Since [1962 each president has given his] own version of the space speech, an attempt to rally the country and recapture the national pride that came with the 1960s-era Apollo program. It has become something of a rite of passage. And last week, at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center, it was the Trump administration’s turn to make the space speech, with Pence at the podium.

And yet, for all the talk, there has been little progress over the past four decades. The United States has not returned astronauts to the moon, or gone to Mars — or met any of the lofty promises wafting out of the White House, as one administration aims for the moon, the next for Mars, then the next for the moon again."

Read the Washington Post, Pence vows America will return to the moon. The history of such promises suggests otherwise.