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The End of the American Space Race?

Currently the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is getting paid around 18.4
billion dollars, while this seems like a large sum it is in actuality less than .5% of the total
national budget showing how low a priority they have been funded on a national level. The
question of whether or not we, as Americans, should continue to fund places such as the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA for short, and advance towards deep space
travel has been the heart of much debate.
The first article, written by John Felton in 2012, is begun by a quick overview of
NASAs most recent mission, the Mars rover landing. John then moves to the issue of NASAs
budget cuts causing them to cancel several upcoming missions and supports the cause to kick
start NASA and restoring the rockets that they had retired. He makes this apparent by using
quotes from sources within the space committee and the hopes of congressional discussion at
their next meeting. Assuming his readers know nothing of NASA and its exploits John Felton
goes into detail the previous successful launches of rovers and satellites. He intends to convince
the public and government alike that continued funding and tax break will help NASA and other
private companies survive and promote the American people into deep space. Felton appears to
focus most if his topics onto people who are invested into the space programs by piling on fact
after fact. In his article, Felton addresses the main argument against his thesis, the idea that it is
not worth the cost of funding NASA to get to space. He counters this idea by stating that the
main issue with the funding is what research it should be directed to. Felton concludes by stating
Two big hurdles face NASA in the near future, Obamas Fiscal 2013 budget which proposes a
small overall reduction to NASAs spending. NASA also faces automatic budget cuts stemming
from Congresss failure to deal effectively with budget issues in 2011.(Felton) All in all the

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entire article was very strong but relied too heavily on the logos and makes it very bland and
tiring to read. While the main issues are now in the past the article gave very specific causes that
could end NASA allowing readers to learn more about them if they wished it. Overall, the text
was not very good and was hard to stay focused when reading.
However, in the second text written by David Masci in 2003 looks at the issue from a
different point of view. Since this text was written several years before John Feltons work, it
lacks some of the details that are in the first text already making it a weaker argument.
Nevertheless, David also believes the space program should continue advancing and continue
going into space. While this is not specifically stated in the text it is assumed by the authors
connotations and whenever a mistake was brought up David explained how NASA fixed it
showing them in a positive light. The text titled NASAs Future begins with an overview of the
recent (back in 2003) shuttle explosion, shuttle Columbia. David then goes on to explain that this
accident that cost the lives of the seven crew onboard placed NASA in a position of distrust due
to their safety measures. Latter in the text it states For now the shuttle program is grounded.
Meanwhile NASA is planning repairs on the remaining three shuttles. Meaning that due to the
shuttle explosion the other three shuttles were decommissioned. Rather than stating whether or
not NASA should continue David just accepts that NASA will continue and adds examples of
what NASAs future may lead to. This is an excellent text, David supports his cause by providing
practical easy to read facts as well as several diagrams explaining in pictures what he is
describing with the text. David also supports his text with several quotes from sources that are
then showed their background information showing their credibility. Overall this text written by
David Masci showed strongly his view of NASAs future while supporting his facts with both

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reliable sources and helpful diagrams. The author also used simpler terms allowing the text to be
read easier and allowed the information to be understood better.
While the future of NASA is still an unknown and a large concern for many American
citizens and employees that work at NASA the hope of space exploration is not far from peoples
mind. Both John Felton and David Masci would agree that NASA should continue and further
humans into the space age. However their belief on how NASA will continue and how they
wrote their texts differ. While John Feltons text was more current and offered much more hard
data than Davids, it was far less superior. When conveying large quantities of information like
these texts did, it is important to maintain the readers attention and David did a far better job at
this.