Whither NASA?
Feb. 3rd, 2003 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sdelmonteWe get the Wall Street Journal at work. For a variety of reasons, personal and professional, I do not like this newspapaer, but show me a front page, and I will read the first few paragraphs of anything, even here. So I find this as a one-sentence lead paragraph...
"Why is America still sending men and women into space?"
The article goes on (on page one, at any rate) to begin telling us why the shuttle program and the space station are a waste, and beyond that I wouldn't read. But you get the gist.
It took two days - one day, really, as the WSJ doesn't come out on Sunday - for a leading Establishment voice to say, without taking sides in a blatant way, that we should end manned spaceflight.
There are legitimate questions about where the space program is going. If we are to spend the money - which is still taxpayer money, no matter how relatively small when compared to X or Y - we need to spend it on something worthwhile. But it's clear that there are a lot of people in this nation who don't see what the big deal is. Rather than as, "why haven't we gone back to the Moon?" or "what happened to Mars?", all they can do is ask "why bother?" They're always out there, of course, but today they make their voices heard, using tragedy as a prop of sorts.
At the same time, though, I think that NASA needs to figure out what its mandate is. The space shuttle is antiquated and of limited use, the astronautical version of a cargo ship. No cargo ship ever lit the imagination on fire. The space station, worthy as it is as a sign of man working together to go out there, has been de-funded to the point that it serves little scientific purpose. There's no sense of mission, and even the worthy science projects that are being conducted seem rather tame.
The drive to go into space is why astronauts go. It's not about science any more than the impusle to explore ever has been. That's what the Wall Street Journal, and people like William Proxmire (a good senator in general but hugely opposed to the space program in his day) fail to understand. But there has to be more than just going to go. But what? I want a mission to Mars, but is that enough to ignite the imagination again, and can anyone find a way to make it affordable? What about the moon, or a space station that can be a home to a community?
The problem, I will state here, is that no one has found a way to make money off of space travel. Ferdinand and Isabella expected a profit. Until someone demonstrates to a Bill Gates that there's gold in them thar hills, the space program will not have the funding it needs. And that really is the problem. But the day there is profit to be made by going to Mars? Look out!
The dreams we have are big. The resources available are not. But we cannot leave our dreams by the wayside just because it's difficult. What was it that Kennedy said, "we do it not despite it being hard, but because it's hard?" That's the dreamer. But dreams still need help. And I wonder if NASA, watching the bottom line and limiting its mission to Earth orbit, still has dreamers. The astronauts still dream. But what about the men in charge? Dare they dream big, and think in ways that go beyond a space program spearheaded by Nixon in 1972?
In the meantime, we mourn and we wait for the investigation, and we look toward a world where it seems that dreams are more about making our world more insular in one way or another, and we wonder if anyone remembers the impulse to go out there, or even the impulse to be the first to make money off a new idea.
But at night, when the clouds part, the stars still come out, and we look towards them. And for a moment, all is clear. The light of those stars came all that way for us to see. And it's only right that we make the effort to return the favor.
And I hope all of the above makes sense. There is an even chance that I could be, as I often am, quite wrong.
"Why is America still sending men and women into space?"
The article goes on (on page one, at any rate) to begin telling us why the shuttle program and the space station are a waste, and beyond that I wouldn't read. But you get the gist.
It took two days - one day, really, as the WSJ doesn't come out on Sunday - for a leading Establishment voice to say, without taking sides in a blatant way, that we should end manned spaceflight.
There are legitimate questions about where the space program is going. If we are to spend the money - which is still taxpayer money, no matter how relatively small when compared to X or Y - we need to spend it on something worthwhile. But it's clear that there are a lot of people in this nation who don't see what the big deal is. Rather than as, "why haven't we gone back to the Moon?" or "what happened to Mars?", all they can do is ask "why bother?" They're always out there, of course, but today they make their voices heard, using tragedy as a prop of sorts.
At the same time, though, I think that NASA needs to figure out what its mandate is. The space shuttle is antiquated and of limited use, the astronautical version of a cargo ship. No cargo ship ever lit the imagination on fire. The space station, worthy as it is as a sign of man working together to go out there, has been de-funded to the point that it serves little scientific purpose. There's no sense of mission, and even the worthy science projects that are being conducted seem rather tame.
The drive to go into space is why astronauts go. It's not about science any more than the impusle to explore ever has been. That's what the Wall Street Journal, and people like William Proxmire (a good senator in general but hugely opposed to the space program in his day) fail to understand. But there has to be more than just going to go. But what? I want a mission to Mars, but is that enough to ignite the imagination again, and can anyone find a way to make it affordable? What about the moon, or a space station that can be a home to a community?
The problem, I will state here, is that no one has found a way to make money off of space travel. Ferdinand and Isabella expected a profit. Until someone demonstrates to a Bill Gates that there's gold in them thar hills, the space program will not have the funding it needs. And that really is the problem. But the day there is profit to be made by going to Mars? Look out!
The dreams we have are big. The resources available are not. But we cannot leave our dreams by the wayside just because it's difficult. What was it that Kennedy said, "we do it not despite it being hard, but because it's hard?" That's the dreamer. But dreams still need help. And I wonder if NASA, watching the bottom line and limiting its mission to Earth orbit, still has dreamers. The astronauts still dream. But what about the men in charge? Dare they dream big, and think in ways that go beyond a space program spearheaded by Nixon in 1972?
In the meantime, we mourn and we wait for the investigation, and we look toward a world where it seems that dreams are more about making our world more insular in one way or another, and we wonder if anyone remembers the impulse to go out there, or even the impulse to be the first to make money off a new idea.
But at night, when the clouds part, the stars still come out, and we look towards them. And for a moment, all is clear. The light of those stars came all that way for us to see. And it's only right that we make the effort to return the favor.
And I hope all of the above makes sense. There is an even chance that I could be, as I often am, quite wrong.
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(no subject)
Date: Feb. 3rd, 2003 03:45 pm (UTC)As it is, I honestly don't see what the ISS is supposed to be, other than a very expensive Spacelab. I thought that the ISS was going to be an orbital shipyard, a way for us to build spacecraft in orbit cheaply so that we could launch from orbit to deep space without the need to boost ourselves with expensive fuel out of Earth's gravity well, but I'm not sure that's at all in the specs.
However, I don't see the concepts of space as a business and manned spaceflight as incompatible. Let's face it - the glamour and mystique of the astronaut is what draws people into the space program to begin with, and that's a huge recruiting plus. What NASA really needs is a vision and a direction, something that's sorely been lacking since Apollo shut down. Someone's got to take them by the balls and say, "Look, stop wasting time - take the money, go to Mars." Or back to the Moon, or the Asteroid Belt. Right now you've got competing interests yanking NASA all over the place, you've got a standing army of thousands of personnel overseeing the Shuttle which by this time should have been reduced to a standard ground crew. I can't look at the space program now and honestly say that its current model justifies its own existence. Where are we going? Where do we want to go?
In the end, though, I think the impetus for manned exploration will win. Even if it's a compromise of send the probes out first, then send men later like we did with Apollo. As Gus Grissom also said in that famous press conference where he said that the conquest of space is worth the risk of life, "Our God-given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves because in the final analysis only Man can fully evaluate the Moon in terms understandable to other men."
Essentially, it doesn't become real until one of us stands on the Moon, or Mars, or an asteroid, or one of the Jovian moons. Robots can show us the data, but there's little poetry in it - and the impetus to science is just as about the sense of wonder as anything out there. Dave Scott, commander of Apollo 15: "There's something to be said about exploring beautiful places... it's good for human spirit." Dollars and cents can't take into account those intangibles, and it's those intangible that will be ensure the future of a space program. The science is one thing, but it's not the only thing. It's also about colonization.
But Lord, we really need to get NASA's act together.
a reply to the WSJ
Date: Feb. 4th, 2003 10:31 am (UTC)How many people died at sea before we learned how to swim or row or sail or build a boat that could survive the seas on it's 24th+ trip? How many people fell out of the sky in aircraft crashes before we learned the complexities of flight and how to build a better glider, plane, hot air baloon gondola, or dirigible?
We don't strap a baby into a wheel chair and call it a cripple the rest of it's life (or worse, kill it outright) because it stumbles while attempting to walk. Space travel is new, like a baby learning to walk, and we are not perfect at it. We will have many stumbles before space travel really takes flight. We need to encourage it's progress, not kill it outright. -H..