The "Fierce Urgency of Now" and Space

I am cross-posting from my post over at spacedemocrats.org

The Fierce Urgency of Now and Space

Many in space circles (including myself at times), express a view that the role of government space is to create, via a steady budget (and the NASA budget is, compared to real markets, reasonably steady), ideal market-like conditions that extend in time from past to the future. The Future being an idealized state when goals are realized. When we go back to the Moon, when we go to Mars, things will be great!

How many years have we habitually, happily-at first- thought this way? How many years have we idealized the future? How confidently we have co-branded NASA with the Future, a place and time where things will be fine.
How many career years have many been just as frustrated as when the future is slow to appear? The future is an idea, nothing more. The idealization of the future may even be a bit a religious notion in our country. Tomorrow, things will be better. Tomorrow, I will go home to Tara. Tomorrow, I will be happy. And so on.

What if, What if! we changed our perspective of our view of government space/time, and conducted the thought experiment: What should "government space" do Right Now? Now, what is the one most critical thing or activities we must do? Isn't this what JFK did? Didn't he address the "fierce urgency of now" (thanks, MLK Jr., and Obama.). Didn't Kennedy, who was not interested in space per se, find the most compelling public need of his moment and create a vibrant space effort to address the public need right now, throwing all other considerations, to a lessor priority? Did not the power of focusing on Now create the history changing Apollo "one of the most marvelous things we have ever done?" (Thanks, Mike Griffin).

To continue the time thought experiment, what if the role of government is not to create a faux, idealized version of a textbook market- like condition ( the universe has laws, but it is not orderly) or market stability for future endeavors, but to create the best possible outcome for the US, and the globe now?

And If do we focus on now, Is there any real question that the largest global challenge is global warming? We know we can make the case that space has so many of the answers for global warming, mitigation, monitoring, and species survival.
Doesn't the specter of species die-off and community die-off, now underway on the planet, enforce the urgency of now and the call of the present to us, the only moment we have, on space or on earth?
And isn't the most sure-footed path to a positive future in space running right through the beckoning fields of the challenges and needs of now?
Thanks to Eckhart
Tolle and others for inspiring this notion. Thanks for reading this musing!