The idea of going back to the moon with a permanent presence and eventually sending a manned expedition to Mars is fascinating. Who would have ever believed that once we had gone to the Moon, we would have abandoned it? Science Fiction writers have written hundreds, if not thousands of stories of Man’s historic initial steps of going to the Moon, but none of them ever imagined what could have really happened, which is that we quit going. Reality is always stranger than fiction, by far.
The President has given NASA and the world a new mandate to go back to the Moon and on to Mars. However, he might have had an additional agenda on his mind when he gave NASA the mandate to go back to the Moon and then on to Mars. He gave them very little additional funding with which to do it, but a generous decades-long timetable to accomplish his mandate, long after he is out of office.
What it means is, that NASA is faced with finding the funds for a new manned Moon program from existing funds, which are now spread over new Shuttle flights and many important projects at Research Facilities in several states. These are very expensive projects, and if the President’s Moon/Mars mandate is to be accomplished, something is going to get the ax now.
Thus, NASA said today that there will be no more Shuttle flights to Hubble.
This means the Space Telescope that has given Mankind such awesome glimpses into the Universe will shortly be allowed to die and fall out of orbit. Not only may some research projects also die, it is likely that several of those critical Research Facilities will be abandoned. In fact, the whole Shuttle Program may also quickly be cancelled. Not only that, but as a result of the death of the Shuttle Program, it is likely the International Space Station may also be abandoned years before its time.
President Bush may have found a way to kill off NASA’s most expensive and most dangerous programs without ever becoming ‘the bad guy what did it.’ If so, it is a very shrewd political move, but it is going to leave several very important and necessary programs dead on the floor. None more so than Hubble, which will likely never be replaced. If I were an Astronomer right now, I would be very concerned about this new direction NASA is taking.
Did the president give the Moon/Mars mandate to NASA only for its positive political benefit to his re-election? His mandate will cost the government very little new money, so how serious is his new space program? Was it his intention to use this new initiative to kill NASA’s Space Shuttle? To kill our involvement in the International Space Station? To kill Hubble, and most of our other space research and development programs?
Whether he planned to do this or not, this is what is now happening at NASA.
Comments?
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.