The LA Times (sorry, registration required) has another typically misguided editorial about the space program. Like much of the rest of the media, they remain mired in the Cold-War mentality, and can only conceive of space as being for “exploration” and “science.” Accordingly, they continue to promulgate the tired and false dichotomy between man and machine.

Where Americans think NASA should go after the February explosion of the space shuttle Columbia depends on whether they’re Star Trek people or robot people. Trekkies say NASA must not shrink from the poetic challenge of human space exploration, that the inspirational pull can’t be measured by money. The robot people point out that unmanned craft do much more science for much less money, that there’s sufficient inspiration to be had from probes now heading for Mars and Saturn or the James Webb space telescope, to be deployed in 2010…

…Both the space shuttle and the international space station, which account for 40% of NASA’s budget, are dubious science. As Robert L. Park, a University of Maryland physics professor, bluntly said of the Columbia mission, “Nothing was being done on that flight that would have any impact on any field of science.”

But where is it written that the only reason that we should expend taxpayer dollars on civil space is science? It’s always assumed that it’s so, but it’s long past time to have a national debate on the subject, rather than continuing old and unresolvable arguments on that are based on flawed assumptions.

There is a little glimmer of hope toward the end, however:

Congress, as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) suggests, should first require NASA to perform a detailed study of the costs and benefits of human space flight. This hard-nosed exercise should not quash the grander vision for space or the unimagined opportunities there. Might NASA find, for example, that entrepreneurs would take over programs it micromanages at a cost of billions?

I’m not sure that any entrepreneur in their right mind would want to do anything that NASA is currently doing, and I’m not sure what they mean by this, but I take heart that, despite their science-centric viewpoint, they’re at least willing to use the world “entrepreneur” in a space editorial. It will be interesting to see what the editorial response is when an actual entrepreneur (like Burt Rutan, or XCOR, or Armadillo) actually puts people into space, with no help whatsoever from NASA.