Obama to link NASA and Pentagon

by Rich Bowden - Jan 4 2009, 22:24

President-elect Barack Obama will look to end long-standing enmities between the Defence Department and NASA, joining civilian and military space missions to combat China in a new space race, according to a Bloomberg report.

The report states the transition team believe close collaboration between the country's civilian and military space program would also maximise cost efficiencies as the United States looks to, once again, send a manned mission to the moon.

The Defence Department has warned of the threat of China's ambitions in space.

“The Obama administration will have all those issues on the table,” said Neal Lane, President Bill Clinton’s science adviser. “The foreign affairs and national security implications have to be considered.”

China's space program moved forward in leaps and bounds during 2008, achieving its first ever space walk while stating its aim of landing a non-manned probe on the moon by 2012, with a manned mission to land a number of years thereafter.

“If China puts a man on the moon, that in itself isn’t necessarily a threat to the U.S.,” said Dean Cheng, a senior Asia analyst with CNA Corp., an Alexandria, Virginia-based national-security research firm in the Bloomberg report. “But it would suggest that China had reached a level of proficiency in space comparable to that of the United States.”

The Obama transition team has suggested merging the country's two space programs would achieve cost savings as the economic downturn puts pressure on government spending.

However the move, though only floated by the transition team, may face barriers from within NASA, according to Bloomberg, where NASA chief Michael Griffin has expressed opposition to the idea.

“The NASA review team is just asking questions; no decisions have been made,” said Nick Shapiro, a transition spokesman for Obama as the team prepares to release its findings.

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