What Went Wrong at NASA?

by Dr. Danny Faulkner on December 31, 2007

Some attribute the decline of NASA to the change in leadership in the early 1970s when
NASA began to pursue evolutionary ideas.
The space age began with a bang on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the rst satellite,
Sputnik. The 98-minute orbit fullled the dreams of a long line of visionaries, from those who wrote the
Greek myth of Icarus to modern science ction writers like H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edgar Rice
Burroughs.
The motives for entering space have variedthe sheer love of discovery, testing human limits, extending
human dominion, gaining military advantage. The American Robert H. Goddard, who was consumed with
the ultimate goal of human space travel, pioneered rocket science between 1914 and 1937. Wernher von
Braun and his German crew, building on Goddards work, designed the V-2 rocket of World War II. As the
war ended, von Braun and most of his colleagues made their way to the American lines to surrender,
after which they helped found the U.S. space program.

The Race to the Moon

The main drive behind early space ight was military superiority. With the help of expertise from the
conquered Germans, the Soviets started the rocket race far ahead of the United States. They launched
Sputnik II before the United States could respond with its rst satellite early in 1958. The rst years saw
many other rsts by the Soviet Union, including the rst animal in orbit (a dog) and the rst human to
orbit the earth, Yuri Gagarin in 1961.
But Sputnik had galvanized the sleeping United States.
Following upon work initiated during the
administration of President Dwight Eisenhower, after
entering ofce in 1961, President John Kennedy rallied
the nation to land American astronauts on the moon
before the end of the decade.
Beginning that same year, each of the six ights of the
Mercury program launched a single astronaut into
space. In 1965 and 1966 ten ights of the Gemini

program followed, each carrying two astronauts. The

purpose of the Mercury and Gemini programs was to
develop the proper equipment, techniques, and
protocols necessary for travel to the moon.

Photo courtesy of NASA

By 1967 the Apollo program was ready to carry three

astronauts to the moon. Tragically, the rst mission of
the program, Apollo 1, ended with a disastrous re during ground testing early that year. All three
astronauts died.
After an extensive redesign of the spacecraft, the rst manned mission (Apollo 7) orbited the earth in
1968 to test the rocket and vehicle. On live television, as the world watched in awe, the Apollo 8
astronauts read from the rst chapter of Genesis while the television networks showed photos taken
while orbiting the moon. Finally, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, the commander of the Apollo 11
mission, stepped onto the lunar surface.

A Crisis of Purpose
Interest in the space program quickly waned after Apollo 11. The last two ights of the Apollo program
(18 and 19) were canceled to save money. Funding for the short-lived space station Skylab was curtailed,
and there were only three missions to that orbiting laboratory. At the height of dtente in 1975, the
United States and the Soviet Union linked an unused Apollo craft with a Soyuz spacecraft. But this was the
last manned ight for the United States for several years.
NASA planners proposed a more efcient way to
explore space by designing a reusable craft. The rst
shuttle ight took place in 1981. Since then, more than
100 shuttle missions have been own, but in many
respects the shuttle program has failed to meet
expectations. The program has always exceeded
budget, has been plagued by difculties, and has own
fewer missions than originally intended. The
catastrophic losses of two shuttles and their crews
crippled the program.
Moreover, many astronomers condemned the shuttle
program as more show than substance, gobbling up
nearly all the space exploration money. Many worthy,
far less expensive, unmanned missions were canceled
over the years.
Photo courtesy of NASA

The shuttle program is a direct contrast to the programs in the early days of NASA, when nearly every
one came in early and under budget. In many respects, the 1960s, under the leadership of German
immigrant Wernher von Braunwho is widely known and admired for his belief in the Creator Godwas
the golden era of NASA.
Some attribute the decline of NASA to the change in leadership in the early 1970s when the former
German scientists retired. As a devout Christian of impeccable character, von Braun opposed evolution,
but after his death NASA began to pursue evolutionary ideas.

Evolutionary Endeavors
Over the years, many changes have taken place at NASA. A few years ago its leadership unveiled the

Origins program. Origins consisted of a suite of space missions and other projects to learn about the origin
of the universe, stars, the earth, and life. Of course, this was all being done within the evolutionary
paradigm.

WHERE DID WE COME FROM? ARE WE ALONE? WHEN THE

ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS ARE KNOWN, OUR
CIVILIZATIONS WILL EVOLVE NEW VISIONS OF WHO WE ARE
AND WHAT OUR FUTURES MIGHT BE.
NASA
In an April 16, 2002, speech at Syracuse University, NASA administrator Sean OKeefe stated, Our effort
to understand the universe is to answer the most fundamental of questions. How did we get here?
Where are we going? Are we alone? Such explicit evolutionary goals were not part of the early space
program.
Yet God has used the wrath of men to praise Him. For instance, at least two of the twelve astronauts
who walked on the moon (Jim Irwin and Charlie Duke) later became Christians. They vigorously shared
their faith and came to believe in recent creation. Many of the photos from various missions illustrated
the handiwork of the Creator, as Psalm 19 proclaims.
Space exploration has shown how special the earth is and how hostile the rest of the universe is to life.
Some measurements have born out what biblical creation suggests about space. For instance, the
creation physicist Russ Humphreys predicted, based on the Genesis creation account, the magnetic elds
of the planets Uranus and Neptune. His predictions were born out by Voyager. In contrast, evolutionary
scientists had failed to correctly predict the magnetic elds of those planets.

MANY OF NASAS PROGRAMS ATTEMPT TO FIND THE ORIGIN

OF LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE.
One high-prole future mission of NASA is to search for planets similar to the earth. The goal is to afrm
evolution. Evolutionists want to demonstrate that earth-like planets are common and that life likely
arose on many of those planets. Yet the extrasolar planets discovered thus farmore than 200are very
different from the earth and are extremely unlikely to have conditions conducive to life. With the aid of
new technology and techniques, NASAs future missions should detect extrasolar planets similar to the
size of the earth, if any exist.

The Bottom Line for Believers

Christians may resent their tax dollars going to such seemingly fruitless research, but is it so fruitless?
Christians should expect that new discoveries, when properly interpreted based on the Bible, will only
enhance the glory of God and improve our understanding of Him.
We have no reason to fear. Based on the Bibles description that God formed the earth to be inhabited
(Isaiah 45:18), we may nd truly earth-like planets to be extremely rare, if they exist at all.
We also understand that life is a miracle that comes directly from God (Genesis 1:21; Psalm 104:30; etc.)
and that it did not arise spontaneously. We expect that much of the Origins program will produce ndings
that yield no positive evidence for evolution. When that happens, we can use that evidence ourselves to
praise the Creator and demonstrate how reasonable it is to believe what God has revealed about
creation in His infallible Word.

Photos courtesty of NASA; Source: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

Answers Magazine
January March 2008

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