Answers To: Space Leadership Advantage

Answers To: Space Leadership Advantage

Space exploration has always been very complex on many levels. On the national front, one has been confronted with the political, diplomatic, budgetary, and technical swings and compromises that govern any national space program. Activities in space also lie in the middle of strategic and foreign policy considerations. As NASA has already had to sacrifice its image as a technology innovator to pursue exploration, it is understandable that it does not want to be further constrained by foreign policy requirements. Exploration, however, demands leadership, which in turn is dependent on foreign policy considerations. But one could argue that exploration in a difficult budget environment would cannibalize both the International Space Station (ISS) and science programs, two areas in which most of the collaborative efforts today are taking place. Such an approach will result in a critical loss of U.S. leadership. Therefore, the current mindset, articulated by the expressions “If we build it, they will follow” and “Forget diplomacy, let’s go back to the moon,” is closer to isolationism than to leadership. In other words, a quarterback by himself isn’t an entire football team.

Answers To: Space Leadership Advantage

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[____] Astronauts conclude that the Obama’s space program would be effective at maintaining leadership.
Buzz Aldrin, second human being to walk on the moon, 2/1/2010, Interviewed by Phil Plait, writer for the Discovery Magazine 2/1/2010. “President Obama’s NASA budget unveiled”. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/02/01/president-obamas-nasa-budget-unveiled/
Now the White House has released a letter from another NASA luminary, Buzz Aldrin, that supports the administration's approach:

As an Apollo astronaut, I know full well the importance of always exploring new frontiers and tackling new challenges as we explore space. The simple truth is that we have already been to the Moon - some 40 years ago. What this nation needs in order to maintain its position as the 21st century leader in space exploration is a near-term focus on lowering the cost of access to space and on developing key, cutting-edge technologies that will take us further and faster - while expanding our opportunities for exploration along the way. The President's program will help us be in this endeavor for the long haul and will allow us to again push our boundaries to achieve new and challenging things beyond Earth. I believe that this is the right program at the right time, and I hope that NASA and our dedicated space community will embrace this new direction as much as I do. By so doing we can together continue to use space exploration to help drive prosperity and innovation right here on Earth.

[____] The Constellation program would not have restored space leadership even if it had been completed.
Roger Handberg, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Central Florida, 5/3/2010, “Post-Constellation blues”, “http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1620/
Taking another pathway to the future is disturbing when you have a particular model of how to do human exploration in your head. What is happening now is that the United States is being forced to adapt to a situation where it no longer dominates events at least until the United States returns to routine human spaceflight. The reality, not always understood, is that this situation would have arisen even if the Constellation program continued on its projected, albeit delayed, path. Regardless of President Obama’s choices, the US confronted a new situation due to the Constellation program’s failure to keep on track and on budget. Advocates ignore the reality that the bulk of Congress is not terribly driven or excited about the space program because its linkages to their constituents are not concrete and immediate. As a general proposition, most would support an American space program, but the reality is that support is not strong enough to drive them to significantly increase NASA’s budget without some greater sense of where the program is going. Prematurely killing the ISS was a perplexing decision from their perspective since NASA seemed to be throwing away a generation of its work and saying, in effect, “Let’s start over.” The Vision for Space Exploration in one sense was a clean-sheet concept despite the obvious carry forward aspects of the Apollo program, but Congress and the American people seem reluctant to start over without first exploiting what has taken several decades to build.

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