Leading Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said that under his administration, the U.S. space program would be “reversed back to where it should be,” saying, “It’s not just about getting to the Moon and outer space. The space program inspires other technological advances to business and the economy,” Alabama’s Huntsville Times reported Oct. 29.
Speaking at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Cain criticized President Barack Obama for his decision “to cut a significant part of the space program” and for leaving the nation reliant on Russian rockets for transportation to the international space station.
“It put the United States in a position that we don’t like,” Cain said. “We don’t like to have to thumb-ride with the Russians when we were the first ones and the leaders in space technology.” While the United States was the first country to land humans on the Moon, the Soviet Union was first to place a satellite, a person and a space station into orbit.
