The progressive slide at NASA may have started before Obama tasked the agency with “Muslim Outreach,” but if not, that was probably a critical moment. Sure, the Global Warming scheme had been whittling away at the space agency for decades, but it wasn’t precisely #woke.
Related: US Senate helps NASA Transition from Climate Cult Back to Space Jam.
The Trump era tried to peel some of that back, but four years isn’t enough time. The creeping climate of Marxism has devolved a bastion of science and exploration into a bunch of navel-gazing cultural engineers more concerned about diversity.
In November 2020 NASA, now under new management and facing an existential visit from a Biden/Harris “transition team,” changed the tagline to: “Through Artemis NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon.” Now, closing out Biden’s third-year, NASA has pulled the bloody shirt Artemis CRT dedication. Its tagline now reads: “Through Artemis missions, NASA will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future human exploration of Mars.”
They are more concerned about sex, gender, and race than finding people, regardless of that, who are willing to accept all the risks inherent in strapping a rocket to your ass and vaulting into the unforgiving void of space.
And I’m not saying there aren’t women or people of color who would shoulder that level of risk, but since NASA has focused on diversity, the number of “astronauts” is at its lowest in two decades.
That’s a loss of seven percent over two years. NASA’s “Astronaut Office” forecasts that three legacy astronauts will leave the corps each year through FY 2027. NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reports that the accelerating attrition will seriously erode NASA’s ability to accomplish the missions already on the books, never mind any new as-yet unforeseen taskings.
You’d be hard-pressed to find evidence the Left is serious for all the talk of getting more people of color into STEM programs. The Diversity progs have been gutting public schools on their urban plantations for decades – schools that no longer require the most basic skills to graduate. If all they’ve got is color and very likely an attitude about how they were screwed over by the system (in this case, Democrats), that’s not going to get them a gig in space.
Not counting the most recent class (Group 23) of ten astronaut “candidates” (four men of color, four women, two white males), the astronaut cadre is already officially “woke.” The current tally includes 44 percent women (mostly “white”) and 56 percent male (mostly “of color). The largest ethnic group of astronauts, “South Asians,” accounts for 23 percent. The next highest segments are “Other,” and “White,” making up 19 percent and 19 percent respectively.
And there’s nothing wrong with that but not every astronaut wants to strap a rocket to their ass.
Not all astronaut billets involve actual missions to space. Ground roles include program development, staffing, Astronaut Office leadership and liaison positions, and increasingly, agency spokespersons to further equity and diversity goals. But space flight missions are the agency’s bread and butter, and NASA’s OIG projects that the astronaut corps will fall below minimum mission requirements for FY 2022 and FY 2023 due to attrition and additional space flight manifest needs.
It’s nice to have aspirations, and NASA has them.
“In clear text, that means that with current flights to the ISS projected for SpaceX Dragon crew capsules, possible Boeing Starliner capsules, and a slew of yet-untested competitors which could come online over the next few years, plus possible Artemis “manned” flights, there won’t be enough astronaut butts to fill manifested seats.”
You thought the local restaurant wait times were terrible due to understaffing; what’s the deal when a multi-billion-dollar tax-funded agency can’t fly the equipment we paid for because there aren’t enough crazy white boys on the team?
I’ll tell you what. That agency wastes more money trying to solve the problem it created while private interests take up the slack. And that’s good and bad. Folks like Musk and Bezos are leading the new space race. If NASA can’t keep up, these guys or others like them have the means to solve the problem. The real question is will the overly progressive government lean in and regulate the crap out of them until that fire dies, and how expensive will NASA get given its new mission, spending money “for space exploration” but not on it. Another laundromat for the progressive agenda.
America would be earthbound and dependent on foreigners, and don’t be surprised if it happens. We have the resources, but Democrats destroy everything they touch, and neither NASA nor its private competitors are immune from the progressive touch of death.
