Any long-term future for the U.S. in space has suddenly become a
great deal less assured, despite the fact space flight has been
paying massive dividends for decades. President Obama, to the joy
of some rivals and enemies of the U.S. Space program, has
produced a future of fudge for it, which upon examination looks
as if it is no future at all. Apparently, according to the
president, the U.S. is not going back to the moon because it’s
already been there, but it’s going somewhere else. Where exactly
is a moot point:
Obama has been reported as saying:
Now, I understand that some believe that we should
attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as
previously planned, but I just have to say pretty bluntly here:
We’ve been there before. Fifty years after the creation of
NASA, our goal is no longer just a destination to reach. Our
goal is the capacity for people to work and learn and operate
and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time,
ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even
indefinite.
Like so many of Obama’s speeches, it sounds good at first,
with something in it for everyone. Except that at a second look,
there doesn’t seem to be anything in it for anyone, least of all
the space-program. It sounds less like a program for exploring
space than for putting off space exploration as jam tomorrow and,
literally, pie in the sky. It also seems to fit uncomfortably
well with to use old-fashioned language, a turning away from the
concept to manifest destiny, which surfaces in Obama’s thoughts
and actions at times.
Neil Armstrong and fellow Apollo 11 program commanders
James Lovell and Eugene Cernan have released a
letter saying that while some of Mr.
Obama’s NASA budget proposals have merit, the decision to cancel
the Constellation program, the Ares 1 and Ares V rockets and the
Orion spacecraft is devastating.
American astronauts could now only reach low earth orbit
and the International Space Station by hitching a ride on the
Russian Soyuz spacecraft at a price of more than $50 million per
seat, the letter said.
It continued:
For the United States, the leading space-faring
nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low
earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go
beyond earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future,
destines our nation to become one of second- or even third-rate
stature.…
Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft
operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long
downhill slide to mediocrity.
Britain provides a historic example. Socialist Prime
Minister Harold Wilson (who once promised: “We are restating our
socialism in terms of the scientific revolution … the Britain
that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution
will be no place for … outdated methods.”) and left-wing
Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath between them killed off
a successful and inexpensive British space program in the 1970s
with its own rockets and satellites (and which, if proceeded
with, would have been a financial Golconda). There was never the
money or, more importantly, the will and inspiration, to start it
again. It drifted off into the realms of “one day…”, becoming
ever more remote. A tiny British space agency has only just been
restarted and its future seems vague and uncertain (this in a
country which each year spends enough on gambling to finance the
U.S. Space program).
Establishing a proper base on the moon would be a huge and
challenging undertaking. Establishing a base somewhere else —
Mars or the asteroids — would be many times more difficult,
expensive, and dangerous. This is not to say it couldn’t, or
shouldn’t, be done eventually — it certainly should and
inevitably someone is going to do it eventually — but to bypass
the moon, a case of running before one can walk, is simply
bizarre. If the U.S.’s goal really is “for people to work and
learn and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended
periods of time,” the moon is the obvious place to learn how to
do it.
Obama’s reported reason for abandoning the moon project —
“We’ve been there before” — if taken seriously, and U.S.
presidential policy pronouncements are meant to be taken
seriously — is simply horrifying in its myopia, ignorance and
philistinism. It is as if 16th-century Spain refused any further
funding for exploring the Americas on the grounds that Columbus
had already reached it (“But one day we’ll go to the North
Pole”).
Twelve men have landed on the moon and stayed for a few
hours, the last more than 40 years ago. They brought back some
rock samples. This was important but in terms of advancing
science did not even scratch the surface of what could be
done.
The Chinese, it seems, appreciate the potential scientific
and possibly military value of the moon. They have launched four
manned rockets, the last carrying two men, and it is reasonable
to guess that they are aiming at a permanent moon-base. India,
Europe, and of course Russia are all pushing into space, while
the U.S. throws away its lead.
In fact, the moon is a ready-made space station. Its low
gravity means large spacecraft can be assembled there relatively
easily for longer voyages. As a major bonus large quantities of
water have recently been found there — a heavy and
incompressible substance difficult to transport into space: you
can’t save weight or space in a space-ship’s stores by carrying
compressed or dehydrated water. The mere fact of working in
vacuum might well establish a whole set of new industries and
technologies. It is simply impossible to know what benefits and
innovations a moon-base would bring, but it is safe to say that,
like the space program itself, they would be substantial.
Further, while an operating moon-base might be a practical
demonstration of the value of space flight, as artificial
satellites have been, with all sorts of unforeseen benefits, it
is hard to imagine the money ever being available for a one-off
shot straight to Mars. What it looks like is administering
euthanasia to the space program while disguising the fact in
pseudo-stirring language of exploration, adventure, and
discovery. It is also hard to imagine “astronaut” being first
choice for a career-option among the best and brightest when the
possibility of getting into space, let alone of setting foot on
another world, is suddenly decades away, if it still exists at
all.
Jerry de Groot, a British professor of history with an
extreme dislike of space flight, has, in a series of anti-space
diatribes, likened space flight to “carrion” and a sign of
America’s “spiritual vacuity.” One thing he has written, however,
is all too plausible. He
claims:
Obama has promised a radical overhaul of space policy.
And pigs might fly…
The president, however, hasn’t the guts to pull the plug
on the manned program. Therefore, he has decided to fudge. Nasa
will be given an additional $6 billion over the next five years
to develop the technologies to take human beings to the Moon
and beyond. Since a mission to Mars is conservatively costed at
$500 billion, the money will pay for a few blueprints.
Obama’s new version of the fudge can be easily explained.
While most Americans have grown contemptuous of funding space
spectaculars [Oh, really?], the voters of Florida remain
enthusiastic, for obvious reasons. Those who work in the space
industry might talk passionately of man’s need to explore, but
what they really want is a wage packet. And, as recent
elections have clearly demonstrated, no president can afford to
annoy the Floridians. I suspect the fudge will continue long
after Obama retires. Landing on Mars will always be an event
scheduled to occur 20 years from tomorrow.
