CS MONITOR
NASA and Obama's budget: the politics and ideals of human space exploration
Negative reaction to the president's initial plan for NASA has forced him
to backpedal a bit and offer a schedule for human spaceflights to Mars and
an asteroid. He now needs to work more closely with Congress to set
long-term, deep-space missions.
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By _the Monitor's Editorial Board_
(http://www.csmonitor.com/About/Contact-Us-Feedback) / April 16, 2010
Human travel to Mars is now back on America’s space agenda.
It is just one of many course-corrections that President Obama will likely
be forced to make to his January proposals for big changes at NASA.
Too many Americans and lawmakers reacted negatively to the initial White
House plan for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They still
see human exploration to specific destinations in space as a compelling
frontier – not just for the nation but humanity, too. They weren’t ready to
live only vague promises of deep-space missions, as Mr. Obama made. Nor do
they want the space agency more focused on earthly tasks such as climate-
change monitoring, as Obama would prefer, over scientific discovery in outer
space.
The public reaction pushed the president on Thursday to set a timetable for
the first Mars trip – by the mid-2030s – as well as a schedule to land on
an asteroid (near 2025). He also had to set 2015 for starting construction
of a heavy-lift launcher based on new innovative technology.
But Obama only partially backed down on his proposal to cancel a Bush-era
program called Constellation. That project, now over budget, would return
Americans to the moon to do more research and to tap that body’s frozen water
for making fuel for lunar launches to Mars and beyond. While he still
wants to stop production of the Ares rockets for the moon mission, Obama did
backpedal a bit by offering to keep the planned Orion crew-ship – but only as
an emergency vehicle to escape the International Space Station.
Even Neil Armstrong, the first human on the moon, opposes an end to the
moon project, partly because other nations, especially China, are gearing up
to land there in the years ahead. America’s leadership in space would be in
jeopardy.
The political battle over funding the moon project will play out in
Congress over coming months. Some compromise may be possible. This debate will
likely have little of the polarizing partisan tones of other issues on Capitol
Hill. Rather, it pits key _political states with many space-related jobs –
Florida,_
(http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0415/Florida-Space-Coast-sees-economic-hardship-in-Obama-plan)
Texas, California, and Colorado – against
other states.
To his credit, the president would raise NASA’s overall budget by about $6
billion over five years – despite his call for cuts during his 2008
campaign. And he wants to support the fledgling private space agency to take
over
many of the government’s goals for low-orbit projects, such as reaching the
space station. He also would extend the space station’s life by four
years.
Finding a political middle that can support NASA’s program through many
presidencies would be Obama’s biggest legacy in space. The agency and the
private contractors can keep suffering financial whiplash every few years, as
they did once again when Obama laid out his goals last January.
One of those potential middle positions was articulated well by Obama on
Thursday: “Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn, operate and
live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time.”
The president erred by not working more closely with Congress before
setting forth his budget plan for NASA. He also may be counting too much on
the
commercial space-launch industry to mature soon enough to take over key NASA
functions and fill the gap – to be temporarily filled by Russian rockets –
caused by the end of the space shuttle program this fall................
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