Should US Vice President Mike Pence’s Fast-tracked Manned Lunar Mission Be Taken Seriously?

Given that he is a staunch Creationist – i.e. believes that the whole Universe is only 6,000 years old and planet Earth is the center of the Universe – should US Vice President Mike Pence’s fast-tracked manned lunar mission be taken seriously?

By: Ringo Bones    

                                                                              

Thanks to Donald trump’s base of Moon landing hoax conspiracy theorists and far-right Christian extremists, America had been reduced into the world’s intellectual laughingstock. But on March 26, 2019, US Vice President Mike Pence called for a greater urgency at NASA to send “American Astronauts to the Moon before the end of 2024 by any means necessary”. Although on how the Trump Administration intends to accomplish an ambitious Moon landing was not clear. Worse still, the Trump Administration just recently slashed funding for the National Science Foundation by more than a billion dollars, supposedly to fund Trump’s Wall.

Remember back in 1989 when then US President George H.W. Bush’s announcement of a 400 plus –billion US dollar manned mission to Mars was “coolly” received? Well, NASA’s top brass will probably had a tougher time reasoning with a task-master who genuinely believes that the whole Universe is only 6,000 years old and planet Earth is flat and is the center of the Universe. Add to that the urgency of “by any means necessary” not to mention the climate change denial policy could prove just another reason why the United States had become the world’s intellectual laughingstock under the Trump Administration.