By Chad Pillai.
In 1962, a young ambitious President inspired our Nation to do the impossible: “Put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth.” Our Nation accepted the challenge and achieved the impossible. Along the way, our Nation benefited from the challenge as technologies developed to achieve the goal was spun off for civilian use.
Recently, President Obama made a similar challenge when he called for the United States to send people to Mars by 2030. While it is beneficial for the President to call for such a goal, it came almost eight years too late into his presidency. Despite President Obama’s late challenge, there are those who have already accepted the challenge to make our Mars Landing a reality.
The Moon Mission was a competition between nations. It pitted the U.S. civilian space agency, NASA, to compete with the Soviet space agency. Today, the U.S. finds itself in both competition and cooperation with Russia, but is in competition with a new space power: China. China has announced plans for both lunar and Mars missions. Other plays include India who has successfully launched its own Mars Orbiter.
To achieve its Mars Quest, the U.S. is taking a different approach: the private sector. The best known privateer seeking to reach Mars is Elon Musk and his company SpaceX with the goal of establishing a million-person colony. What makes this so exciting is that others are choosing to compete against SpaceX. In fact, Boeing CEO, Deni Muilenburg, at a press conference said “I’m convinced that the first person to set foot on mars will arrive their riding a Boeing rocket.” This is the kind of competition our Nation needs to spur innovation. In order to land and colonize Mars, new technologies will have to be invented, creating the creative environment to transform the U.S. economy. The fact that private sector companies will be competing with each other, they will be competing against Russian, Chinese, and Indian state run programs. It is the opportunity for the U.S. to once again demonstrate its greatness when faced with competition.
This is an element missing from today’s election year discussions. We are looking towards the past in the hopes that we will regain jobs that shipped overseas to China. Instead, we need to look forward to the manufacturing jobs that will propel us into the final frontier. Let the Chinese and others make low-end manufacturing goods while American workers forge the spaceships of the future, and create the new technologies that American ingenuity is known for. Let us aspire to harness our competitive nature to be first to Mars and let others aspire to dream like us again. This is how we will continue to make America Greater!
