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Whither NASA?
Feb. 3rd, 2003 01:26 pmWe 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.
