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In his famous speech, Kennedy had asked for Gods blessing: As we set sail, we ask Gods blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked. Buzz Aldrin, who followed him, brought a small plastic container of wine and a piece of bread, and actually took Communion on the moon. The stunning success of the landing strengthened the notion that the United States was favored by God over other would-be spacefaring nations, Weibel says.

The holy cosmos: The new religion of space exploration

It was not clear for a long time who was going to do it, she says. If you see it as Team Atheist and Team God, and Team God wins, what does that tell you from their perspective?

Weibel says Pences remarks remind her of the language used by evangelical astronauts, a small but passionate group of people for whom spaceflight had an intense spiritual impact. Jim Irwin, the late Apollo astronaut, became an outspoken evangelical Christian after his lunar mission in 1971. In his memoir, Irwin wrote that he felt God was with him during his mission, like when he prayed for help with a mechanical problem instead of contacting mission control in Houston, and the solution came to him right after.

Jeffrey Williams, who flew to the International Space Station four times, has spoken similarly of sensing Gods presence in space. He also wrote of the experience of seeing Earth at a distance, as God would. In order to give you a glimpse of the wonders of Gods creation from this vantage point that Im talking about, I need to give you a perspective of what the vantage point is, Williams told a Christian radio program in 2011. So imagine yourself on the International Space Station, traveling 17,500 miles an hour, orbits the Earth every 90 minutes Imagine yourself going outside perhaps once in a while and hanging on to the outside and viewing Gods creation, we call Earth, down below.

Most of the evangelical astronauts emerged from the Apollo and space-shuttle eras, Weibel says. In the decades following the moon landing and first shuttle flights, the rhetoric around space exploration that had dominated during the Cold War began to fade. The mission shifted away from national defense and toward scientific discovery. Weibel says younger astronauts she has interviewed are less likely to invoke their predecessors convictions about the future of American space travel. Part of it is more recent astronauts have had to cooperate with the Russians, she says. You have crews on the ISS now that are multinational. For the Americans involved in that, theyre not under the sway of this idea of American exceptionalism.

Eventually, even Aldrin had second thoughts about partaking in a Christian tradition on the moon. Perhaps, if I had it to do over again, I would not choose to celebrate communion, Aldrin wrote in his 2009 memoir. Although it was a deeply meaningful experience for me, it was a Christian sacrament, and we had come to the moon in the name of all mankindbe they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists.

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Mike Pence and the Gospel of NASA - The Atlantic

Mike Pence has announced plans for a new, separate US Space Force as a sixth military service by 2020.

The US vice-president said the development is needed to ensure Americas dominance in space amid heightened competition and threats from China and Russia.

In a speech at the Pentagon in Washington DC, Pence said that while space was once peaceful and uncontested, it is now crowded and adversarial.

Previous administrations all but neglected the growing security threats emerging in space, Pence said. Our adversaries have transformed space into a war-fighting domain already, and the United States will not shrink from this challenge.

Donald Trump has called for a separate but equal space force and has been seen as a key driving force behind the headline-grabbing move.

In a tweet Thursday, the president cheered on his number twos speech. Space Force all the way! he wrote.

The proposal calls for the Space Force to become a new sixth branch of the military on par with the army, navy, air force, marines and coast guard. If successful it would become the first new branch of the armed services to be created since 1947.

However, any proposal to create a new service would require congressional action and is likely to come under close scrutiny, especially from Democrats.

To prepare for the new force, Pence announced that the administration would put together an elite squad of service members to fight wars in space, known as the Space Operations Force and drawn from all parts of the military like the existing special forces.

There will also be a United States Space Command, which will develop doctrine and tactics for fighting wars in space.

And the administration plans to create an assistant secretary of defense for space, a position that would eventually turn into a head of the independent Space Force.

The defense secretary, Jim Mattis, has endorsed plans to reorganize the militarys current space-war fighting forces and create a new command, but has previously opposed launching an expensive separate new service. But he said this week he was in agreement with the White House.

Retired astronaut Capt Mark Kelly called the proposed space force a dumb idea, saying it would duplicate work already done by the air force.

There is a threat out there, but its being handled by the US Air Force today. It doesnt make sense to build a whole other level of bureaucracy, he told MSNBC.

Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz said Republicans were too afraid to tell the president the idea was a bad one. Although Space Force wont happen, its dangerous to have a leader who cannot be talked out of crazy ideas, the Democrat tweeted.

But Alabama representative Mike Rogers said he was thrilled with the announcement. We in the House have been warning for years about the threats to our space assets and the unacceptably slow pace to develop more capable space systems, he said.

Pence said the White House is already talking to congressional leaders about getting the new branch approved.

America will always seek peace, in space as on earth, but history proves that peace only comes through strength. And in the realm of outer space, the United States Space Force will be that strength in the years ahead, he said.

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Space Force: Mike Pence launches plans for sixth military ...

Vice President Mike Pence speaks to attendees during a Homeland Security Department conference in New York last month.

Vice President Mike Pence once argued that a president could be removed from office simply if he lost the moral authority to lead.

CNN unearthed two newspaper columns that Pence wrote in the late 1990s, when he was a radio host. In them, Pence made the argument that President Bill Clinton had lost his moral authority to lead the country because of his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Pence wrote that a president needed to be held to a higher moral standard that our next door neighbor, dismissing the idea that the president is just like the rest of us.

The president of the United States can incinerate the planet, he said.

As a result, the First Family must be role models, he argued.

Pence has largely stayed silent regarding the allegations that President Donald Trump had extramarital affairs with a former Playboy model Karen McDougal and a former adult firm actress Stormy Daniels and knew that payments were made to them during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep their stories from becoming public.

Read: FBI has secret tape of Trump talking payment to Playboy model

Pence did once call Daniels assertions of an affair with Trump baseless. Trump is being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller over allegations his campaign colluded with Russia. Trump has repeatedly called the probe to be halted.

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Mike Pence once argued a president could be removed on ...

At the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Mike Pence penned two opinion columns calling for former President Bill Clinton to quit or be removed from office.

But the current vice presidents moralistic writings from the late 90s and early 2000s, which CNN unearthed from the Wayback Machine internet archive on Monday, have not aged well.

Pences preachy prose on how presidents should behave, in particular, seems irreconcilable with the conduct of President Donald Trump.

Wayback Machine

In the above column, titled The Two Schools Of Thought On Clinton that was posted on the now-deleted website for Pences Indiana talk radio show, Pence argued the office of president required its incumbent to be of the highest integrity.

If you and I fall into bad moral habits, we can harm our families, our employers and our friends. The President of the United States can incinerate the planet. Seriously, the very idea that we ought to have at or less than the same moral demands placed on the Chief Executive that we place on our next door neighbor is ludicrous and dangerous. Throughout our history, we have seen the presidency as the repository of all of our highest hopes and ideals and values. To demand less is to do an injustice to the blood that bought our freedoms.

In another column on his congressional campaign website, titled Why Clinton Must Resign Or Be Impeached, Pence condemned Clintons affair with college intern Monica Lewinsky and the subsequent attempts to lie about it.

Our leaders must either act to restore the luster and dignity of the institution of the Presidency or we can be certain that this is only the beginning of an even more difficult time for our land.

Its unclear whether Pence still believes what he wrote in his old essays.Trump is accused of multiple extramarital affairs and coverups with hush money payments. And he was recorded bragging about sexually assaulting women.

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These Old Mike Pence Columns On How A President Should ...

You can thank Pence for DeVos. They are longtime allies, going back decades, who bonded over such shared passions as making it O.K. for students to use government money, in the form of vouchers, at religious schools. Pence cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate to confirm her as education secretary. It was the first time in history that a vice president had done that for a cabinet nominee.

Fiercely opposed to abortion, Pence once spoke positively on the House floor about historical figures who actually placed it beyond doubt that the offense of abortion was a capital offense, punishable even by death. He seemed to back federal funds for anti-gay conversion therapy. He promoted a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

He is absolutely certain that his moral view should govern public policy, DAntonio told me.

DAntonio then recounted two stories that he heard from college classmates of Pences after the book had gone to bed, so theyre not in there. One involved a woman in Pences weekly college prayer group. When she couldnt describe a discrete born again experience, he lectured her on her deficiencies as a Christian and said that she really wasnt the sort of Christian that needed to be in this group, DAntonio said.

Another involved a college friend of Pences who later sought his counsel about coming out as gay. DAntonio said that Pence told the friend: You have to stay closeted, you have to get help, youre sick and youre not my friend anymore.

According to DAntonios book, Pence sees himself and fellow Christian warriors as a blessed but oppressed group, and his hope for the future resided in his faith that, as chosen people, conservative evangelicals would eventually be served by a leader whom God would enable to defeat their enemies and create a Christian nation.

I asked DAntonio the nagging, obvious question: Is America worse off with Trump or Pence?

I have to say that I prefer Donald Trump, because I think that Trump is more obvious in his intent, he said, while Pence tends to disguise his agenda. DAntonio then pointed out that if Pence assumed the presidency in the second half of Trumps first term, hed be eligible to run in 2020 and 2024 and potentially occupy the White House for up to 10 years.

Heaven help us.

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Opinion | Mike Pence, Holy Terror - The New York Times