What Should NASA Do to Secure Its Future?
To get the funding the agency desires, space advocates have some explaining to do.
Last
week the panel charged with reviewing the future of U.S. human spaceflight went before Congress
to discuss its summary report (which we covered
here).
The
Augustine panel took quite a bit of heat from the House Committee on Science
and Technology, which was dismayed that the panel had not been more specific in
its recommendations. Some chair members were also disgruntled that the panel
had provided alternative options to NASA’s current exploration plan even though
it did not find any evidence of mismanagement or technical problems.
It’s
clear from the panel’s report that NASA needs more money if it is to send
humans to other bodies in the solar system–even if the agency uses the
commercial sector–and that the Obama administration has some hefty decisions
to make on the future of U.S. space exploration in the coming weeks.
This story is only available to subscribers.
Don’t settle for half the story.
Get paywall-free access to technology news for the here and now.
Subscribe now
Already a subscriber?
Sign in
You’ve read all your free stories.
MIT Technology Review provides an
intelligent and independent filter for the
flood of information about technology.
Subscribe now
Already a subscriber?
Sign in
The
Space Review’s
editor and publisher, Jeff Foust, has written a
nice article here
analyzing the one question that needs to be answered for NASA to receive its
desired funding (an additional $3 billion per year): Why should the U.S. have a
human spaceflight program at all?
The
“real reason why we continue to do civil human spaceflight,” says
Foust, is “because we have for nearly 50 years, starting with that
incredible surge in the 1960s when we raced the Soviet Union to the Moon and
won.”
Foust continues:
If we
were to stop doing it, the reasoning goes, we would look weak and lose
prestige, regardless of what else we decided to do in space or elsewhere
instead of human spaceflight. It’s not an exciting argument to starry-eyed
space enthusiasts who dream of going to the Moon and beyond, but it does
explain a great many things.
In
addition, Foust argues that the benefits of “the frontier”–traveling
into the solar system–need to be brought back to the people so that civilians understand
the value of space travel.
While
Foust says it may be too late in the near term for a compelling argument for
human spaceflight to be made to the public so that NASA can get the $3 billion
(the administration does have more pressing issues like healthcare to deal
with), there is hope for the future, assuming the administration gives NASA
just enough to sustain its current program.
He
concludes:
If
NASA’s human spaceflight program is to survive, and thrive, its supporters
would do well to take that message to heart: to better explain to the public,
the White House, and Congress how it is aligned with national interests and
provides “better value” (another phrase from [NASA deputy
administrator Lori Garver’s] speech [at AIAA Space 2009]). To do so may require
a shift from the tired old reasons of the past to new ones that put the space
agency at the heart of a new mission to open up human spaceflight to a wider
range of applications and a greater degree of relevance and importance to all.
