An editorial and accompanying news article from The Economist.
Space exploration
Too farsighted
Nov 14th 2002
>From The Economist print edition
EARLIER this year, Tom DeLay, a Republican congressman from Texas, accused
NASA, America's space agency, of having a �lack of vision�. He is not the
first person to make this criticism and he certainly won't be the last. But
what such critics actually mean is not that the agency has no vision�but
that they happen to disagree with the one it has. In the case of Mr DeLay,
his expressed dismay at the �anaemic� financing available for human
space-flight was more a call of �Houston, we have a funding problem.�
Such accusations of a lack of vision should not sting NASA, because they
could not be more wrong. For one thing the agency already spends the lion's
share of its $15 billion annual budget on human space-flight. For another,
if there is one thing that sums up what NASA has suffered from over the
past three decades, it is too much vision, not too little. And the symptoms
of this are most visible in the bloated, late, over-budget and largely
useless human space-flight projects that it has been pursuing since the
Apollo programme.
Vision express
After men landed on the moon, NASA needed to find something else to do, so
it decided to try to put men on Mars. But Richard Nixon turned down this
grand vision. And so, according to Roger Pielke, director of the Centre for
Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado,
Boulder, the agency simply broke the mission into three more easily
sellable parts: the shuttle, the space station, and then Mars (see
article). It was then left in the impossible position of having to justify
each step on its own merits alone. This led both to the overselling of the
shuttle and to the thin veneer of �science� that has been arranged around
the space station.
It is true that science can be done in the space station. But science can
also be done dressed in a clown suit atop a large Ferris wheel. The
argument ought to be over where is the best place for it. Performing
experiments in microgravity does not require a $100 billion platform.
Moreover, much of the work that can genuinely be done only on the station
is justified through another magnificently circular leap of logic. Research
into the effects of microgravity on human health and the growth of soya
beans, for instance, is useful only in the context of a manned mission to
Mars.
The only good reason for NASA to be involved in human space-flight is to
lay the ground for opening space up for everybody. It takes a vast leap of
imagination to detect this reason in NASA's present strategy. Fleeting
visits to the moon (or, one day, to Mars) would turn the agency into little
more than an elite travel agent. But for decades there has been a huge
pent-up demand for flights into space. Although the private sector is
finally making some progress towards this, NASA should have been there
years ago. What is still needed is research and development on economical
and safe space transport for the public at large. Space, like the Wild
West, can be truly opened up only by the private sector. NASA's central
goal in human space flight should be to make that possible.
Until NASA swaps its destination-driven thinking for a science-based
approach focused on such objectives, the post-1960 generation that has
grown up hoping to travel or even live in space will continue to feel
betrayed. Several years ago, an organisation called the Space Frontier
Foundation observed bitterly: �Thirty-six years after sending John Glenn
into orbit, NASA has finally achieved the capability to send John Glenn
into orbit.�NASA must find a more practical reason for the human
space-flight programme. Sending people to eat all those soya beans cannot
be it
Human space-flight
2020 vision
Nov 14th 2002
>From The Economist print edition
NASA does some fancy financial footwork to deal with a budget crisis
FIVE BILLION dollars is a lot of money. A line of dollar bills five billion
long would reach to the moon and back. Finding that you have a $5 billion
budget shortfall�as NASA, America's space agency, did last year�is
therefore no mean feat.
Cash crunches are nothing new at NASA, but this one is more serious. In the
past, when the agency has waved its begging-bowl before American
politicians, the bowl has usually been filled. This time, neither President
George Bush nor Congress is interested in letting NASA spend its way out of
its problems. A true crisis has finally arrived. And, a year ago, Mr Bush
appointed Sean O'Keefe, a self-professed �bean-counter�, to deal with it.
Opportunity knocks
The Chinese ideogram for �crisis� combines those for danger and
opportunity. The opportunity for NASA is to scale back some of its
over-ambitious plans for human space-flight and to try and stick to a
budget. The danger is that, even if scaled back, most of this programme is
pointless, and it would be unreasonably expensive even if it had a point.
Roger Pielke, director of the Centre for Science and Technology Policy
Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder, says that when NASA's
grand vision of a mission to Mars was turned down almost 30 years ago, it
broke its proposal into three smaller parts that were easier to smuggle
past the politicians. One was a reusable launch vehicle; the second, a
space station; and the third, further off, a putative Mars mission. But
this meant that NASA had to sell the shuttle and the station individually
and on their own, rather dubious merits.
It is this, says Dr Pielke, that has led to NASA's big problem. The
shuttle, it was promised, would make access to space more affordable.
Instead, it became more expensive. The suggestion was that shuttles would
fly every week at a cost of $14m a pop. In fact, the four-to-six launches a
year that the agency now manages cost roughly $400m each. The space
station, meanwhile, was supposed to cost $8 billion when it was first
assessed in 1984, and it was meant to take a decade to build. The total
cost of the project, when it is completed (which is not yet), is now put at
some $100 billion.
For now, the budget crisis has put NASA in a holding pattern�trying to keep
all its assets afloat. Details of its long-term strategy will not emerge
until its 2004 budget request. But both inside and outside the agency,
questions are being asked about what its core mission should be.
That NASA is serious about changing is suggested by an unusual budget
request that the agency has just put to Congress. The request is unusual
because it is not for more money, but rather to shuffle the existing budget
around. Previously, NASA was planning to spend $4.8 billion on the
groundwork for a fully reusable launch vehicle to replace the shuttle. Now,
itwants to divide that money between the space station (allowing crews to
do some actual science there) and the development of a reusable �orbital
space plane� (OSP) that would be launched on top of a cheap expendable rocket.
If the request is approved, it will represent a big change of strategy,
since research has already started on a fully reusable vehicle. It will
also be a move in the right direction. According to Antonio Elias,
vice-president of advanced programmes at Orbital Sciences Corporation, a
commercial-satellite company based in Dulles, Virginia, a reusable vehicle
would take 15-25 years to pay back its development costs�three times longer
than an OSP. Furthermore, he says that fully reusable craft are hard to
justify at all unless they can be flown at least 50 times a year.
Since global demand for launches is expected to run at between 30 and 40
�shuttle equivalents� a year over the next two decades, the numbers
scarcely add up. The economic rate for reusable vehicles, says Dr Elias,
has not changed for decades, because the two fundamental parameters of
rocketry�the efficiency of rocket engines and the properties of structural
materials�have not changed.
An OSP could, it is reckoned, be ready by 2012. It would have two
functions. The first would be to provide a cheap way of transferring crew
between earth and the station. The second would be to act as a lifeboat for
the station, a role now filled by a Russian-built Soyuz capsule that can
house only three people.
NASA would still need to be able to get to the space station in the
interim, however. It therefore proposes to extend the life of the shuttle
programme. Not everybody is happy about this. Some are concerned that the
shuttle fleet, which is two decades old, will become increasingly costly to
run at present levels of safety and reliability. Even now, the fleet costs
$3.8 billion a year, including its fixed costs. That is a significant chunk
of NASA's $15 billion annual budget. And the $400m marginal cost of a
launch is ludicrous compared with the $60m that the Americans pay for a
Soyuz mission. Objectors thus believe that what is really needed is an
�exit strategy� from the whole sorry mess.
The question is: what? There are precious few options. One is
privatisation. Some time over the next few weeks an independent report on
privatising the shuttle fleet will land on Mr O'Keefe's desk. However, one
of the report's compilers, Peter Wilson of RAND, a think-tank based in
Santa Monica, California, says that the overall view it will take of the
possibilities for privatisation is �very pessimistic�. Because the shuttle
is such old technology, says Mr Wilson, and is also expensive to operate
safely, it is unlikely that any private enterprise would wish to acquire it
without a direct subsidy. In any case, there is only one market for it�to
service the space station. It is therefore unclear what benefits would flow
from full-fledged private ownership.
One suggestion in the report is that NASA could restructure the shuttle
programme to allow more competitive sourcing. Another is that the programme
could be hived off into a new �space transit authority�. Although this
would merely create a different public monopoly in manned space travel, it
might have the benefit of getting NASA out of the business altogether and
forcing it to focus on what should be its core competence of science and
technology.
There is one other alternative to the shuttle fleet�more use of Soyuz. But
according to Scott Giles, the deputy staff director at the House of
Representatives' Committee on Science, that will not work either. The
crunch will come with the expiry in 2006 of agreements to buy Soyuz
vehicles from Energia, the company that makes them. According to Charles
Vick, an independent space analyst, Energia could not build more Soyuz
craft after 2006 even if the agreement were renegotiated, because the
programme is nearly bankrupt and is already running down in anticipation of
its expiry (money supplied to the Russian government to stop this happening
having mysteriously evaporated).
Between 2006 and the arrival of the OSP, then, there will be a gap. And the
one answer that might look obvious�put the space station in mothballs and
wait for the OSP�is probably not an option since the station needs regular
visits from craft with rocket engines to stop its orbit decaying. Without
them it might crash to earth within a year. So the shuttle will probably
limp on, for this reason if no other.
None of this, of course, answers the question of why the station should
continue to survive at all. Between now and the arrival of the OSP,
therefore, NASA would like to get some science done on it, so as to justify
its existence.
At present, with only a three-man crew aboard (due to the limited capacity
of the Soyuz escape pod), this is not possible. If the budget request goes
through, that will change a bit. There will be more shuttle launches to the
station, and they will have science payloads on board. However, it is
likely that the experiments themselves will actually be done on the
shuttle�it will merely be docked to the station for an extended period
while the research is carried out. On top of that, there remains the
question of whether any of the science will be worthwhile. Except for
research directed at making manned space-flight easier (a pretty circular
argument for justifying human-conducted experiments in space), it is hard
to see the case for any human experimenters in space at all.
Both feet on the ground
Back on earth, Mr O'Keefe is also engaged in more mundane forms of cost
control. Programmes are being cut. Bureaucrats, heaven forfend, are being
made redundant. And he has also cast his beady eye on things that you might
think NASA would be rather good at. Recently, for example, he described the
agency's information-technology capabilities as �expensive, fractured,
incompatible, but remarkably accessible to those who would like to use
sensitive design and personnel information for personal gain.� Indeed, in
August, hackers managed to steal plans for future reusable space vehicles.
There is still some way to go. Only this month, two sets of independent
analysts found yet another huge budget shortfall at the space station.
Depending on which of these estimates you believe, it is either $117m or
$582m over the next four years. NASA is delighted. Steven Isakowitz, the
agency's comptroller, remarked to SpaceNews that this was great news
because, �they could have come back and said you're $3 billion short�. If
that is thought to be progress, perhaps human space-flight is doomed after
all.
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
People everywhere want to say what they think; choose who will govern
them; worship as they please; educate their children -- male and female;
own property; and enjoy the benefits of their labor. These values of
freedom are right and true for every person, in every society -- and the
duty of protecting these values against their enemies is the common
calling of freedom-loving people across the globe and across the ages.
-US National Security Policy, 2002
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