The Obama administration released its new national space policy yesterday, and the media and blogosphere are busy dissecting the wonk-talk. When policies like this emerge— 14 pages of obsessively crafted, careful words — the experts have a field day picking them part, tallying certain words and noticing the conspicuous absence of others.
The most striking emphasis to me is something that is not at all new: a continued push to get the government out of the rocket business. Commercial space has been a clear focus of the new NASA ever since the presidential budget was released in February. But what’s not clear is if it will end up happening, given Congressional intransigence.
The New York Times rightfully points out that the new policy has some important language that promotes collaborative, peaceful use of space — striking in its difference from that of the Bush administration, which insisted on a being able to pre-emptively protect assets in space. But it is not at all clear if the new language will actually lead to any meaningful progress on a space weapons treaty, a thorny issue that has been around for decades, and probably will remain cloudy for decades to come.
When it comes to space science, the new space policy is mostly muted, limited to two pages that reinforce a shift at NASA where space telescopes will turn inward towards Earth, and focus on climate change. One sentence manages to encapsulate all the rest — astrophysics, heliophysics and planetary science — iin one tremendously long-winded breadth:
“[The NASA administrator shall] continue a strong program of space science for observations, research, and analysis of our Sun, solar system, and universe to enhance knowledge of the cosmos, further our understanding of fundamental natural and physical sciences, understand the conditions that may support the development of life, and search for planetary bodies and Earth-like planets in orbit around other stars.”
For those who get hung up on destinations and timelines for the human program: The Moon is indeed conspicuously absent. NASA is supposed to send people beyond the Moon by 2025, and to Mars by the 2030s.