Reach for the Moon

By Chris Talamo, Staff Columnist

Published on Monday, February 8, 2010

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I have written a number of disparaging columns about NASA and their budget in the past. However, President Barack Obama’s new budget proposal and its implications for NASA infuriate me more than any of NASA’s embarrassing failures ever have. The proposal might save us some money in the short term, but it will set American space exploration back decades with little hope of future restoration.

For those of you not up to speed on your NASA folklore, let me hit you with the relevant information. The legendary space shuttle was designed throughout the 1970s and put into service in 1982. Recently, NASA began to wonder why we were using such outdated technology to rocket astronauts outside of our atmosphere and began the Constellation Program to design a next generation shuttle. However, the past space shuttle is going to be retired this year, and there is clearly no present replacement from Constellation. In plain and simple terms, Obama’s proposal will not only leave NASA without a means to send people to space, but will also destroy any future potential of restoring that ability.

I can understand Obama’s motive. I thought it was a little bit wacky when former President George W. Bush started talking about going to the Moon by 2020, but figured that replacing a space shuttle that was 30 years old was probably a good direction for NASA. What I cannot understand is Obama’s response. NASA’s budget is a small percentage of the Congressional budget, but even if it was an expensive item, space is the future of human exploration and should be explored. How could we have repaired the Hubble Space Telescope four times without the space shuttle? “Rest assured,” I am told, “we can and will build unmanned satellites to monitor climate change and other topics in earth science.”

Then there are others who believe, like Sam Buntz ’11 (“Blue Moon,” Feb. 3), that we are spoiling the beauty and awe of the cosmos by “molesting” it with “the prodding fingers of mankind.” Somehow, retreating back into our terrestrial shell will solve this and rekindle a newfound fascination of the cosmos. What these poetic individuals seem to miss is that there is an impressive exchange of information between astronomy and other physical sciences — what astronomers learn quickly becomes consumer technology (microwaves, for example) and what physicists learn on Earth can often be applied to astronomy. Even if we stop visiting the Moon, we will eventually discover its mysteries from Earth, but it will have taken a much longer time.

Obama’s proposal is not completely without mind of a replacement space program. He argues that private firms should be allowed and able to take up the slack by developing their own space programs from which NASA would essentially buy tickets for their astronauts. Of course, when is the last time you heard of a private company’s spaceship traveling to the moon? How about keeping up a sustainable orbit? One of the most successful space firms, Bigelow Aerospace, might be close to achieving orbit, but they plan to develop a space hotel with that technology. By my estimate, the private firms are operating at the 1960’s capability level. Obama’s proposal, then, would drive American manned space capability back about 50 years.

Most worrisome is the potential damage to the scientific community. Unmanned spacecrafts are acceptable, even better in some instances than manned spacecraft — no one wants to sit on an orbiter making ozone measurements for 10 years. However, other experiments require human care. I already mentioned repairs on the Hubble Telescope, but for you biologists and chemists out there, a number of low gravity experiments are done at the International Space Station (ISS). Also in Obama’s proposal is a tentative termination of U.S. support for the ISS in 2020. I guess scientists will have to perform those experiments in their suites at the Bigelow space hotel.

I was concerned enough about the five years America would be shuttle-less while the Constellation program built its next incarnation, and scrapping the program now is only going to severely lengthen that time. Private space flight is not prepared to take on all of the responsibilities that NASA currently bears, and if we turn space exploration over to the private sector, we can expect to see scientific facilities decline in quality and quantity. Perhaps someday in the future we can expect to see a Bell Space Laboratory, but until then we must have a well-funded NASA to blaze the way to that future.