According to the Miami Herald:
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani promised aerospace leaders Friday that he will work to close the looming gap in the nation's manned space program, if he lands in the White House. "A strong NASA and a revitalized space program will be a priority for a Giuliani Administration from day one," Giuliani said. Giuliani said he would try to narrow and possibly even eliminate the four- to five-year gap in human launchings from Cape Canaveral that is expected once NASA's space shuttles are retired in 2010. The shuttle replacements, intended as eventual moonships, are not expected to fly with astronauts until at least 2014 or 2015. "This is not acceptable," the former New York City mayor said. "America should be No. 1 in space. We have been. We shouldn't lose that position."
That should play pretty well in the sunshine state. But for conservatives outside of Florida, it's hard to see the current shuttle program--and the international space station--as anything but an enormous waste of money. I'd think Giuliani would get more bang for his buck on the subject if he talked about the need to get Americans back to the moon before the Chinese set up shop on the lunar surface. It provides, to my mind, the only compelling reason for continuing the manned space program, and it ties the enormous expense of the space program to a matter of national security--and prestige. As one executive told Giuliani at the press conference:
"My fear is that one of these days we're going to wake up and look up and it's going to go overhead and there will be no Americans on [the space station]."
I think most conservatives could live with that. What we ought to fear is waking up one day to find a bunch of Chicoms up there and no Americans to keep an eye on them.