It is tragic that America, the nation that 41 years ago became the first (and for the time being, still the only) nation to put a man on the moon, now has no manned space program.   Barak Obama has displayed his typical lack of vision in cancelling the Constellation program.  As Charles Krauthammer has said, in a decade when we look up at the moon, there will be people there, but no Americans.  But I have a few suggestions on how this tragedy might still be avoided.  Here are some suggestions I have come up with to save our manned space program.

- Propose a massive program for zero-gee experimentation on viable human embryos.  Make it involve the destruction of hundreds or better thousands of human embryos every year in a new, massive space laboratory.  Suggest a follow-on program for experiments to be performed in the 1/6 gravity of the moon.  Make a list of all diseases known to man and claim this research could cure all of them.   If this won’t make Barak’s eyes light up, I don’t know what could.

- Have Joe Biden give a major address on the Obama administration’s new space policy.  He’ll probably make his typical hash of it, and accidentally announce that Constellation has been re-instated, its development has been accelerated, and commit the Administration to the goal of putting a human on Mars by 2010 before they’re able to yank him off the stage.

-  I’m not sure how to do this yet, but convince Barak that it is vitally in America’s best interests to have no manned space program, and that America’s stature in the world will be greatly reduced to have one.   He’ll throw resources into NASA like it’s a teacher’s union in Vermont.

- Make all NASA employees SEUI members.

- Have NASA propose a new initiative that involves spelling “Barak Obama” on the surface of the moon in lettering so large it can be seen from the earth.

- Change the name of the Constellation program to the “Barak Obama” program.

- Change the name of the Internation Space Station to the “Barak Obama” Space Station.

- Retroactively change the name of project Apollo to project “Barak Obama.”

- Change the name of “outer space” from “outer space” to “Barak Obama.”

- Start a rumor that all opponents of manned space exploration are rabidly racist.  Arrange a meeting of all manned space exploration opponents, and have Democratic congressmen walk right through the meeting.  Make claims that hateful racial epitaphs were thrown at them as they walked through the crowd.  Bring Heath Shuler along so he can claim that it was one of the ugliest displays he’s ever seen in American public life.

- Have all astronauts promise that from now on they will bow to the waist to foreign astronauts whenever they board the ISS.

- Put Bart Supak in charge of Congressional opponents to the Constellation program.  Five minutes before the final vote to cancel the program, offer him $45 in counterfeit Monopoly playmoney and a forged “get out of jail free” card if he switches his support to in favor of the Constellation program.  He’ll fold like a house of cards and the program will be saved.

Those are just a few ideas.  Perhaps there are better ones.