Politics
Pace is the chair of Mitt Romney's Space Policy Advisory Group. Pace wrote that Romney is the only 2012 presidential candidate with "the leadership, management skill, and commitment to American exceptionalism" to restore "the U.S. space program to greatness." Pace has stated that the 2020 date Newt Gingrich suggested for a lunar base was feasible when it was proposed in 2005, but it is no longer. Pace said a return to the moon is doable, but it is hard to figure out when NASA could achieve this.
It is not clear that NASA will ever send another manned rocket into space, according to Pace. "It may be one where NASA simply buys commercial launch services, or it may be that NASA decides that it really does need to have a government-owned and operated vehicle. You know, the existence of commercial airline services does not mean we don't have military cargo transports. We have both. And we use each as appropriate."
He was appointed as a NASA administrator by George W. Bush and supported Bush's plan to return to the moon. He has been diappointed that President Barack Obama has cancelled those plans. Pace has stated, "Space leadership is highly symbolic of national capabilities and international influence, and a decline in space leadership will be seen as symbolic of a relative decline in U.S. power and influence."
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Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“In politics people throw themselves, as on a sickbed, from one side to the other in the belief they will lie more comfortably.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
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“Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)