As I write, space shuttle Atlantis is presently docked at the International Space Station to deliver four tons of equipment. This is the last shuttle mission before the fleet is retired. The American manned space program will now go on hiatus. After fifty years in space and thirty years with the shuttle, any U.S. astronauts going up will now have to hitch a ride with the Russians. As a lifelong space enthusiast I have to admit I'm terribly disappointed with this shortsighted state of affairs.
It seems all part of a nation abandoning its dreams and pulling in on itself. The spirit of adventure and exploration that gave rise to the country seems to have evaporated. We appear to be under the sway of decision makers more concerned about saving a nickel than making a dollar. As a child, I watched the first astronauts go up. First Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom, then John Glenn fired our imaginations and national pride by rocketing into the heavens on a column of flame. Before the end of the 1960s, strikingly courageous trailblazers backed by American resolve, organizational acumen and scientific prowess had fulfilled President Kennedy's pledge to land on the moon. Missions to Mars were planned for the 1980s. And then things started getting scaled back.
The entire space shuttle program has cost $209 billion. That's $7 billion a year, $7 billion that is equivalent to less than one month's expenses in Afghanistan. Viewed from a practical standpoint, money invested in the space program has yielded a huge return for the U.S. economy. That investment has been responsible for immense advances in computers, electronics, weather prediction, the GPS system, communications, cryogenics, physics, aeronautics, and the developments of myriad substances able to withstand extremes of temperature and stress. Take a look at some spinoffs here. There are thousands of them.
In the 1960s the space program was 4.4% of the U.S. budget. In 1972 that was cut back to 1.6%. Now it is less than 0.5%. While the forward-looking nations of the world that are emerging as the new leaders are investing in space, technology and modern infrastructure, many who seem to hold sway in America tell us we cannot afford to dream and explore, to embrace cutting edge energy production or even to modernize our aging and inadequate transportation system. That is poppycock. We will spend three times the entire NASA budget this year paying absentee "farmers" not to grow crops.
I would instead contend that the nation that loses its spirit of adventure, scales back its vision and turns its back on the future by failing to keep up with the innovation of its international competitors is far along the path toward obsolescence and decline. I for one have heard quite enough from those who continue to tell us what we can't afford and can't do. We Americans need galvanizing dreams, the call of the frontier, and a national challenge to call forth our best efforts. The establishment of a moon base or a Mars program would fit the bill nicely. We have been waiting and drifting long enough. Let's go.
2 comments:
Unfortunately, we seem to have a bunch of people who can't see the forest from the trees in Congress. As you stated, let's save a buck by ratcheting down the space program budget, while turning a blind eye to the billions of wasted dollars being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Of course, some of that money isn't being wasted, but if we'd only not become involved there in the first place. But that's hindsight. I'm not sure a mission to Mars is feasible at this time. Working to create water recycling components on a space ship will take many years to develop. Carrying along 4+ years of food seems daunting, plus the storage of all of the human waste that will accumulate over that time period will also have to be addressed. If anyone believes that we can just dump our waste into space as we travel is pretty arrogant. I, for one, would not want any intelligent life that might wander into our space sector to encounter human waste as their first experience of what we people are like.
While these problems are being worked out, I believe the ISS is where we should concentrate our continuing space effort. Perhaps creating a smaller, more maneuverable space vehicle is something that we should consider, something like a two man space plane that can take off, take to space, dock with the ISS and then return safely to earth to be reused again and again, much like the space shuttle, but with less cost. That might appease both sides of the aisle.
Good thoughts, Webfoot. Agreed a mission to Mars isn't feasible at this time. It is in solving such problems that NASA excels in coming up with new inventions that find applications in the economy and society at large. All the water gets recycled, as does the human waste. The waste fertilizes algae that produces the oxygen and most of the food for the journey. Even the urine is purified and drunk or used to grow the algae and vegetables. The goal and need is a closed system that reuses everything.
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