Trump’s Space Directive:
Back to the Moon
with a Renewed Purpose?
by Kesha Rogers, independent candidate for Congress from the Texas 9th CD
[Print version of this article]
Dec. 18 (EIRNS)—Space Policy Directive 1, signed by President Trump on Dec. 11, represents a change in our national space policy, to return human beings to the Moon and then carry out a mission to Mars and beyond. In his address during the signing ceremony, the President declared,
The directive I’m signing today will refocus America’s space program on Human exploration and discovery. It marks an important step in returning American Astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972 for long term exploration and use. This time we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprint. We will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars, and perhaps someday to many worlds beyond. This directive will ensure America’s space program, once again, leads and inspires all of humanity.
The signing of this directive came only nine months after the President signed the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017, in March. Shortly after that, the President relaunched the National Space Council, with Vice President Pence at its head. The first meeting of the council, on October 5, unanimously recommended a plan to return human beings to the lunar surface.
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NASA
Harrison Schmitt on the Moon, Dec. 11, 1972.
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This year marks the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 17 Moon landing on December 7, 1972, the last time that human beings walked on the surface of the Moon. Apollo astronaut. Harrison Schmitt, the last living crew member of that Apollo 17 mission, was present at the signing of the space policy directive on Dec. 11. He has not only advocated a national mission to return to the lunar surface, but has been a strong proponent of mining helium-3 on the Moon for advanced propulsion and other energy uses.
During the ceremony, the President pledged that we will return to the Moon. Addressing Schmitt, he said,
Exactly forty-five years ago, almost to the minute, Jack became the last American to land on the Moon. Today we pledge that he will not be the last, and I suspect that we will be finding other places to land, in addition to the Moon.
This new policy under President Trump shuts down the ridiculous plan of sending human beings to an asteroid, and commits the USA to making lunar exploration a national priority.
In 2010 this author launched her campaign as a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, to save our national space program from the hideous and destructive cuts of former president Obama, who declared, in reference to the need to send human beings back to the lunar surface, that we had “been there, done that.” President Obama’s policy did not merely reject the relaunching of a lunar mission; he rejected the future progress that a full lunar development mission—requiring and enabling the breakthrough to thermonuclear fusion power—would mean for humanity as a whole. Obama condemned the very idea of the quality of national mission that would restore optimism to the country and unify it around a real science driver and economic recovery program, as expressed in a national space mission coherent with Krafft Ehricke’s Three Laws of Astronautics (see below).
A national space mission renews the opportunity to launch a real physical economic recovery program for the nation. Such a real recovery program requires the adoption of Lyndon LaRouche’s four economic laws to save the United States—specifically, abandoning the use of Wall Street to generate profits from speculation, and employing a federal credit system, through which credit is issued to—
generate high productivity trends in improvement of employment, with the accompanying intention, to increase the physical-economic productivity, and living standards of the persons and households of the United States.
Examples include upgrading to high-speed rail for freight and passenger transportation, upgrading to nuclear fission and fusion for abundant electrical power, and upgrading to a full human space program that brings our Moon into the economic grasp of mankind, garnering all the spin-off technologies of all of these upgrades to every sector of our economy, including agriculture, medicine, machine tool design, and supply-chain logistics.
In essence, this requires a crash science-driver program to develop a fusion energy economy, and the exploration and development of space, which is also key to the productive cultural and economic future of our nation, and the world.
Remember the unifying words of President John F. Kennedy:
For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the Moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.
The instruments of knowledge and understanding must be our renewed commitment today to peaceful cooperation in the development and exploration of space with all nations. We must abolish any laws that prevent our national space agency from working in cooperation with any nation, including China. China has taken a leading role in space exploration through its national space program, and responded very positively to the announced plans of the United States to send human beings back to the surface of the Moon and on to Mars. In a press briefing, China Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said, “China is glad to see countries making progress in the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes.” He said, “China hopes members of the international community will reach an agreement on preventing the weaponization of outer space.”
It is time for President Trump to commit our nation to join with all leading nations of the world in a community of shared destiny in the exploration and development of space, as the basis for meeting the challenges and solving problems facing all mankind.
The President of the United States will address the nation on January 30 in his first State of the Union Address. We must see to it that nothing gets in the way of him fulfilling a commitment to renew our national mission and restore optimism to our nation.
Krafft Ehricke’s ‘Three Laws’
Ehricke summarized his philosophy of astronautics in three laws (1957):
First Law. Nobody and nothing under the natural laws of this universe impose any limitations on man except man himself.
Second Law. Not only the Earth, but the entire Solar System, and as much of the universe as he can reach under the laws of nature, are man’s rightful field of activity.
Third Law. By expanding through the universe, man fulfills his destiny as an element of life, endowed with the power of reason and the wisdom of the moral law within himself.
The first law is astronautics’ challenge to man to write his declaration of independence from a priori thinking, from uncritically accepted conditions, in other words, from a past and principally different pre-technological world clinging to him. This can be done.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of this country prove it.
—Cited in Krafft Ehricke’s Extraterrestrial Imperative by
Marsha Freeman (Apogee Books, 2009).
