Retired US Astronaut Eileen Collins arrives speak on the third day of the Republican National Convention on Wednesday. (credit: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
In the week or so since it became known that Eileen Collins would appear at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night, the space community has buzzed with questions and concerns. A brilliant astronaut and the first woman to command a space shuttle, Collins has a sterling reputation among the flight directors, astronauts and engineers at NASA who worked with her. Why would she jump into the political fray, many asked? And for Donald Trump, of all people?
I felt the answer was pretty simple. Like a lot of astronauts Collins comes from a military background (she’s a colonel in the U.S. Air Force), and therefore more likely to be conservative politically. Perhaps she had had discussions with the Trump people, and they endorsed her view that NASA should return to the Moon before going to Mars. In any case, it’s not like she’s the first former astronaut to take on politics (Hello, John Glenn and Harrison Schmitt).
So on a night when Ted Cruz stole the show at the convention for political observers, the four-minute speech given by Collins garnered the most interest among the space industry. Her remarks were largely a fairly standard call to restore some glory to America’s space program, and she touched on how it has been unacceptable to rely on Russia for transport to the International Space Program for the last five years. America can, and must do better than that, Collins said.
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Sorry, Eileen Collins: Here’s why America is already great in space
