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Are you sure on the first part? My read of the historical narrative is that folks attribute the success of Apollo to JFK, not Nixon, and not Johnson. However wrong or right.

(It should be pointed out that I was born in the mid-80s, and am frequently distracted by cat memes. But I have briefly worked for NASA.)

I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but I am saying if you're wrong, it's because history tends to treat assassinated persons overly well (provided they were in good standing in the first place).

He's absolutely right and while the assassination certainly "helped" cement his legacy, the reason we give Kennedy most of the political credit is because he got the ball rolling on the national political stage and he was a great speaker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwFvJog2dMw

Watching this video makes me extremely sad because that's 1962. Here we are 51 (fifty fucking one!) years later and I can't begin to imagine a modern US president making a speech like this.

"Not because they are easy, but because they are hard!"

I don't know, man. I'm 24. For all I know, Harry Truman was a great speaker and we in modern times just aren't as familiar with his material. Nixon v Kennedy was the first GE with televised debates, was it not? And are not modern, TV-viewing American unwilling to listen to someone's speech if they can't watch it too? FDR had those "fireside chats" on radio, what was it, weekly? I've never once heard more than a ten second clip from one.

Furthermore, Kennedy was president during the narrow "American togetherness" window after WWII and before Vietnam, giving him the room to say, "Hey, let's we do this thing." Nowadays "we" can't do anything except "step up on education" and "not negotiate with terrorists." Anything more asks too much from a public that relishes picking sides for the sake of picking sides.

Only because JFK died and it was a memorial project. If he hadn't died, Johnson (or whoever succeeded JFK in 1968 (or '64, who knows?)) would have gotten the credit, if we'd made it by '69 in the first place - doubtful.

Besides, if the president who proposes Mars will get the credit, that'll be Bush. The president who actually pays for it will lose.

>Other than at the height of the lunar landing program, most Americans think it's a waste.

I think this has to do with the lack of notable "stuff" nasa has been doing over the past few dozen years because of budget constraints. People think nasa takes up a huge amount of the budget, and then when they hear that all they've been doing over the last few decades is LEO/probe work, it's not hard to imagine that a layman would be unsatisified with them.

>I don't think the space program alone is going to fix our underlying maladies, but it will help.

You're absolutely right on this. It certainly wont fix the problem, but finding a reason to dump a few hundred billion dollars into an agency that brings up to 14x economic returns in addition to a boost in national pride is a pretty good investment.[1]

[1] http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20100827_1798.php

> I think this has to do with the lack of notable "stuff" nasa has been doing over the past few dozen years because of budget constraints.

No, it has to do with 90% of NASA's current work having no benefit to the day-to-day life of 90% of Americans.

> It certainly wont fix the problem, but finding a reason to dump a few hundred billion dollars into an agency that brings up to 14x economic returns in addition to a boost in national pride is a pretty good investment

Your citation:

> Some early academic and other studies “made very ‘generous’ assumptions about the spinoffs, goods and services produced as a result of NASA’s investments,” G. Scott Hubbard, a consulting professor at Stanford University, said in an e-mail. A study commissioned by Hubbard in the mid-2000s when he was director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California on the center’s local economic impact found a “more conservative” 2- to 3-to-1 ratio.

So 14x isn't realistic, more like 2-3x. And there's no comparison with other public investments. Obama said the Human Genome Project returned 140x. One study said highway investment returned 52x in the 1950-1991 period [1]. Public preschooling allegedly returns 7x [2]. What about reducing crime, subsidizing college tuition, medical research? All of these things, by the way, are exactly what people mean when they say NASA is a waste and that problems "at home" should be addressed instead. I think these concerns are legitimate and should not be waved off as "not caring about science" (doing so definitely alienates those whose support you're trying get though). We all live on Earth.

Announcing a Mars mission won't bring national pride. Completing it will. The only way that will happen, and I'm certain it will, is a space race against China, once they solidify their currently vague space ambitions [3]. I hate to say it, but it was jingoism which spurred Apollo, and it will be the same with a mission to Mars.

[1] 32% per annum simple interest over 40 years, http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/nadiri2.htm

[2] http://www.ed.gov/blog/2013/04/obama-administration-budget-m...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_space_program#Mission_...

90% of NASA's current work having no benefit to the day-to-day life of 90% of Americans.

Not that Americans have ever understood the ROI of space research. Most of them don't know NASA makes their satellite weather a possibility - most of them don't even know that without satellites we wouldn't have even the forecast accuracy we do. Most of them don't know NASA makes their TV possible. All they know is the moon landings, and that was eons ago.

Add that to the fact that Americans have absolutely no idea how their tax dollars are spent, and bam - asking Americans about spending policy is just time wasted.

  | it will be the same with a mission to Mars.

At a national level, maybe, but Elon Musk/SpaceX have ambitions of Mars. We may see the private sector make it to Mars first.

The president that will get credit for landing a man on Mars is the president 20 years later, not the president that initiates the program in the first place.

Are you sure? I don't think many people give Nixon credit for the moon landings.