US human spaceflight ‘on an unsustainable trajectory’ - October 23, 2009
America has always had a good line in space rhetoric. Khrushchev may have got their first, but Kennedy said it best.
This hasn’t escaped the notice of the Augustine commission, which has been examining NASA’s human spaceflight programme (see: Presidential panel narrows NASA’s options). Today the commission put out its final report, with the title page stating it was “Seeking A Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation”. There’s even a quote from Kennedy inside.
But this is not a report brimming with hope. This is how it opens:
The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources.
It goes on:
It really is rocket science. Space operations become all the more difficult when means do not match aspirations. Such is the case today.
What should be done about this then?
Most of the big conclusions of the report have already been revealed (see Nature’s previous coverage). But here they are in black and white (and, for some reason, blue backgrounds).
Firstly, says the commission, NASA’s budget should match its mission and goals. That pretty much means more money or less impressive goals.
There should be a “bold new international effort”, which should help defray some of the extra costs onto other countries.
Consideration should also be given to extending the operating life of the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, says the report. Commercial space services should be encouraged, perhaps with a competition and there should be better investment in technology development.
Crucially, says the commission, human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit is not feasible under the 2010 budget guideline. A bigger budget would allow Americans to walk again on the Moon, or follow a ‘flexible path’ taking in lunar orbit, the Lagrange points and near-Earth objects before orbiting Mars.
At a press conference on his groups report, Norman Augustine went further. He explicitly backed the ‘flexible path’ as being a “more sensible” option than returning to the Moon. He also said that the current replacement for the Shuttle – the under-development Ares-1 was not a great piece of kit (see, for example NY Times).
Let’s go back to that Kennedy quote: “We choose...to do [these] things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
Comments
The basic conclusion of the Augustine Report is not rocket science. Without an increase in budget, NASA cannot achieve the goals the Bush Administration laid down for it in manned space flight.
However, a budget increase is highly unlikely, given the size of the current US budget deficit and National Debt, and all the other things that the Obama Administration want to spend money on. So NASA is going to have to trim, and it seems to me that it would be better to focus on the unmanned exploration of the solar system for now.
There is a lot of very good science that can be done without risking astronauts' lives or spending vast sums of money to get people into space.
I am not against manned space exploration - I think that it is a good thing, but it is undoubtedly expensive and extremely hazardous, and at the moment low down the order of priorities, given all the many problems that need to be focussed on here on Earth first, so why not push ahead with what _can_ be done, at good return in terms of what is learnt for what is spent, namely the unmanned programme, and with the various forms of Earth-based astronomy?
Posted by: Richard Blaber | October 25, 2009 11:32 AM