Neil Armstrong to Congress: NASA Space Program ‘Embarrassing & Unacceptable;’ Freemason Link

Neil Armstrong at NASA 50th Anniversary Meeting at Congress Sept. 22

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, told Congress Thursday that the end of the space shuttle era has left the U.S. human spaceflight program in an “embarrassing and unacceptable” state.

“We will have no American access to, and return from, low Earth orbit and the International Space Station for an unpredictable length of time in the future,” Armstrong told the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology according to AFP.

“For a country that has invested so much for so long to achieve a leadership position in space exploration and exploitation, this condition is viewed by many as lamentably embarrassing and unacceptable.”

Armstrong was part of a four-member panel of space experts called, “NASA Human Spaceflight Past, Present and Future: Where Do We Go From Here?” who told lawmakers that NASA needs a stronger vision for the future and should focus on returning people to the International Space Station and the Moon.

The 81-year-old is also a confirmed 33rd Degree Freemason according to a leader at the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple in Washington, D.C. when he was interviewed by the hosts of the TV show “Decoded.”

All of the astronauts on Armstrong’s space mission were confirmed as Masons as well by the Master Mason interviewed, and evidence points to NASA requiring the occult affiliation.

“A lead, however earnestly and expensively won, once lost, is nearly impossible to regain,” said the former astronaut who was commander of Apollo 11 and walked on the Moon in 1969.

President Obama canceled the Constellation program that would have returned people to the Moon and ordered NASA to focus on new, deep-space capabilities to carry people to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars by 2030.

The retirement in July of the three-decade-old space shuttle program brought an end to the U.S. capability to send people to space until private industry designs a new commercial space capsule that experts believe will take until 2015.

Currently, Russia’s Soyuz capsules are the only taxis for the world’s astronauts heading to low-Earth orbit, and a ticket to the ISS costs global space agencies between $50 and $60 million dollars each.

“Get the shuttle out of the garage down there at Kennedy (Space Center), crank up the motors and put it back in service,” said Eugene Cernan, who commanded the Apollo 17 flight and was the last man to walk on the Moon in 1972.

“You want a launch vehicle today that will service the ISS? We’ve got it sitting down there. So before we put it in a museum, let’s make use of it. It’s in the prime of its life, how could we just put it away?”

Cernan hailed the vision of John F. Kennedy, “a bold and courageous president who started us on a journey to the stars,” and said thousands of Americans have been inspired by the space race with the Soviet Union.

“Today, we are on a path of decay. We are seeing the book close on five decades of accomplishment as the leader in human space exploration,” Cernan said.

Cernan said Constellation has been replaced by a “mission to nowhere” and called on NASA to make plans to return to the Moon.

“As unimaginable as it seems, we have now come full circle and ceded our leadership role in space back to the same country – albeit by a different name – that spurred our challenge five decades ago.”

He added: “I take no solace in the failure of the last Soyuz booster.”

Due to technical problem with a Soyuz rocket in August, a Russian cargo ship failed to reach orbit and crashed back to Earth, prompting Russia to temporarily ground a part of its Soyuz program to do emergency checks.

Armstrong and others on the panel appeared to favor the unveiling earlier this month of a massive new launcher capable of powering manned space flights well beyond low-Earth orbit, the Space Launch System, which NASA called the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V rocket put US astronauts on the moon.

Michael Griffin, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, raised concerns about a new space race and called China, which wants to put a robot on the Moon in 2013 and build its own space station for 2015, “a near-peer competitor.”

“When the Chinese can reach the Moon and we cannot, I do not see why any other nation would regard us as a world leader,” he said.