• NASA To build a starship
NASA To build a starship
Last week, President George W. Bush announced a new “vision” for the U.S. space program: a return to the moon and then a manned trip to Mars. Comedians and skeptics weighed in immediately.
Q. Why does Bush want to go to Mars?
A. They found oil there and Halliburton is supplying the astronauts.
Even former Vice President Al Gore got into the act, calling Mr. Bush’s plan a “retread” and suggesting the president spend more time trying to make Earth habitable.
Given the vagueness of Mr. Bush’s proposal and its enormous potential cost, the skepticism is understandable. But lost in the laughter was an important, down-to-Earth story: Mr. Bush has now given direction to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, an agency that has been floundering in doubt and recrimination since last Feb. 1.
That was the day the shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas, killing seven astronauts. The investigation that followed was damning: NASA’s hear-no-evil management culture had sacrificed safety for bureaucratic imperatives. The investigation, chaired by retired Admiral Hal Gehman – and why isn’t he running for president? – produced a calm, dispassionate and convincing indictment of not only NASA, but also of the national ambivalence toward the space program.
That ambivalence resulted in a space agency that was straining to do too much with too few resources, the board said. “It is the view of the board that the previous attempts to develop a replacement vehicle for the aging shuttle represent a failure of national leadership.”
Mr. Bush has now directed NASA to retire the shuttle fleet in 2010 and begin work on a second-generation space vehicle. The shuttle, with its huge payload bay, is critical to the completion of the International Space Station, but by 2010 the major work will be finished and the United States can abandon this ill-conceived venture.
The ISS was sold as not only a laboratory for low-Earth orbital science, but also as a jumping-off point for interplanetary expedition. That proposition was always dubious; for NASA, the main purpose of the ISS was to keep the shuttle flying. But the space station program proved far more costly than envisioned, sucking off resources that NASA should have spent on other missions.
As the Gehman board suggested, whatever the United States chooses to do next in space – whether it be a return to the moon, a trip to Mars or low Earth orbital science – will require a dependable, adaptable, reusable vehicle that can put people into space and bring them back again. Such a vehicle is the logical next step and a worthy goal, the board said, but only if commitment is sustained over the next decade with a clear purpose in mind and only if the nation is clearly resolved to pay for it.
Wednesday, the president committed the United States to this logical and worthy next step. You can’t go the stars without a starship.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
