Link Turn – Intra-NASA – Priorities

Link Turn – Immediate Returns

CBO’s assessments incorporated the assumptions, which are also part of NASA’s current projection, that the space shuttle would be retired in 2010 and the United States would terminate its participation in the International Space Station’s operations by 2017. Some people argue, however, that the space shuttle should be retired immediately to free up more funds in the near term for exploration and to avoid the potential safety risks identified since the loss of the shuttle Columbia. In CBO’s estimation, immediately retiring the shuttle and ending the United States’ involvement with the ISS offer potential savings of $39 billion to $43 billion from 2005 through 2020, de- pending on the costs of terminating the programs. If those savings were reallocated to exploration missions, the first human lunar return landing might be moved up by nearly four years, CBO estimates—that is, to 2016, compared with NASA’s projection of 2020. (That esti- mate is based on the assumptions that costs for the explo- ration vision do not increase relative to NASA’s projected amounts and that the maturation of technology and the missions’ overall design process can keep pace with such a schedule.

What would constitute rational budget priorities for NASA? The agency's first emphasis should be research about Earth and the sun. That's the sole area in which NASA spending is odds-on to produce immediate returns for taxpayers. Second, NASA should fund more automated probes and satellites to study this solar system and close-by star systems—the parts of space that might have some effect on us. Almost all NASA findings since the moon program have come from automated probes such as Cassini, which a few weeks ago discovered what appears to be a water vent on a moon of Saturn. Most probe projects cost less than a single launch of the space shuttle. Third, the agency should cancel the shuttle program and use the funds to research new propulsion systems that might fundamentally reduce the price of access to space. A fundamental propulsion breakthrough must come before grand visions like a Mars mission. . . .Fourth, NASA needs a serious program for searching nearby space for asteroids and comets that might strike Earth and figuring out how to deflect any big rock headed this way. Asteroids and comets large enough to cause devastation may strike Earth distressingly often . . . If NASA protected Earth against a strike from space, that might be, let's say, the most significant accomplishment in human history. Yet NASA has only a minor program to search for "near-Earth objects" and no program to figure out what to do about them. Preventing comet strikes would give taxpayers a return on their money, and we can't have that! The new budget request suggests that no one in the agency's hidebound, turf-obsessed upper management wants to think about what NASA can do to actually benefit the public.