America’s space program is at a crossroads. This year, the Space Shuttle fleet is expected to be retired after nearly 30 years of ferrying astronauts and equipment into space. In addition, there have been calls to have its immediate successor — the Ares I launch vehicle which would be topped with an Orion crew capsule — shelved altogether.
A 155-page report issued in November 2009 by the Augustine Panel made a number of recommendations on which direction to steer NASA in the future. The recommendations included 1) hitching rides into space using spacecraft from other nations or private contractors, 2) keeping the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs alive, albeit in more limited roles, and 3) shifting the focus from returning to the moon and instead aiming for Mars.
The Augustine Panel also made it clear that the estimated $145 billion cost to return to the moon by 2020 would not be possible given NASA’s $18.7 billion yearly allowance for all operations.
With 2001 long gone and 2010 here, their namesake movies now appear insanely optimistic about where we’d be in space by those dates. I guess war and making money was more important than advancing science, exploration and all that stuff we used to do.
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Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Maybe these companies will do what NASA should have been doing for the last thirty years;developing “cheep” (relatively speaking) ways to get material and people into space and back safely.
In the face of mounting debt and instability, major decreases in science funding seem inevitable, starting with those programs whose ambitious goals and vision mark them as idealistic and frivolous. Space science and exploration will be tempting targets. Deep cuts to science funding would offer meager short-term gains, but in the long run would hasten the decline of America’s global preeminence and reduce our ability to adapt to a rapidly changing world.