Well, they obviously didn’t read my last disquisition in response to their muddled leader about manned space. In the latest issue, they seem to welcome Sean O’Keefe as the new NASA head, because they think that he’s a bean counter who will shut down that yucky manned space program and give them back their beloved robotic space science. I can see why they might be a little confused. As their article notes (apologies for the quaint old-world spelling):

…O’Keefe ruffled feathers in Washington, DC, when he presented the House Science Committee with exactly the kind of chart that space enthusiasts hate to see: a side-by-side comparison of government spending on manned space flight against spending on other research programmes. His graph showed that the National Institute of Health’s cancer research centre received $4 billion in federal funds last year, but the space station got twice as much. “I mean, why put that in that graph like that?” asked Dave Weldon, a Florida congressman whose district includes the Kennedy Space Centre. “The reason that I’m particularly bothered by this is, you know, you’re here for the administration and the administration claims to be a big supporter of manned spaceflight.”

I’m not sure where the reporter comes up with that number–station doesn’t get “twice that much”–it gets about the same. He may be taking all of NASA’s manned space activities, including Shuttle, to come up with something close to “twice that much,” but it’s misleading, if not false, reportage.

Anyway, it’s beside the point. Unfortunately, both the good congressman and the reporters at The Economist continue to equate “manned spaceflight” with multibillion-dollar boondoggles that provide jobs in Houston, Huntsville and Cocoa Beach. Unfortunately for The Economist’s science reporter, such a chart showing JPL missions against the rest of the federal science budget wouldn’t reflect well on space in general, manned or unmanned.

I say again–we do not have a space program (or programme) for the purposes of science–if that were its purpose it would justify little more budget than in any other industrialized country (much much less than its current one percent of the federal whole).

My take on O’Keefe is that he is actually more than just a bean counter. He’s a seasoned technical manager with a good track record of recognizing problems and cleaning them up. Rumor has it that he was selected specifically by Dick Cheney and will have his ear and support. That little briefing last month was indeed battleground preparation for a showdown between the White House and the Congress over space policy. We just had eight years of an administration that had zero interest in space, other than as a foreign policy tool, at loggerheads with a Congress that saw it primarily as a source of pork and patronage.

The real question is, just what does this administration want to do in space? Is O’Keefe going to “do the thing right,” or do the right thing? I’m moderately hopeful that it will first be the former, and then, the latter. And if the upcoming housecleaning results in an actual national debate on space policy, and why we have a space program, that will be a very good thing, regardless of what happens to the “manned space programme.”