Former Congressional space staffer David Goldston has a piece over at Nature about the grid-locked and paralytic state of space policy. He also describes the ongoing ignorance of much of the Congress, the media, and the public on the subject:

…the story one hears now from most members of Congress, and some in the media, is that the president made a speech about going to Mars in 2004, got nothing but grief for it, and the proposal went nowhere. This is, of course, almost entirely wrong.

As I’ve noted in the past, federal space policy has two problems: it’s non-partisan, and it’s unimportant. It has both supporters and defenders on both sides of the aisle, which might at first glance seem a good thing, but it’s not, really, because we never debate the issue in ideological terms that can arouse the partisan passions necessary to really make things happen. Recall John Kerry’s “space policy” from the 2004 campaign.

…he released a written space policy document, of sorts, the other day (which is unfortunately conflated with aeronautics policy, so it’s a jumble of air and space, and NASA and the FAA), which is probably the best we’re going to get before we head into the voting booth on Tuesday.

I haven’t the space here to dissect it in all its glory, but it’s rife with policy non-sequiturs and false choices, and vague in specifics, other than calling for “balance,” and making the meaningless pledge of “assigning appropriate priority to all NASA programs” (we’re presumably supposed to trust, or hope, that Senator Kerry’s priorities are ours). The word “Bush” appears in it nine times, by my count, and there are zero occurrences of the words “shuttle” or “station.” This is not a policy document — it’s a campaign document, and like most Kerry campaign documents, it’s a pledge to be the un-Bush, no further details necessary.

And the unimportance of space policy (other than to those who get the pork) should be obvious–NASA’s budget is now down to one half of one percent of the federal budget.

The other problem he describes, of NASA having too much on its plate, with too little budget, is unlikely to go away for the reason he states–those politicians who support NASA generally only support the part of it that’s important to them, so they will all continue to make sure that the money flows to the right places, regardless of whether or not it’s enough to actually accomplish anything. His analysis is depressingly familiar to any of us who have studied the situation for much time (and I’ve been watching it for about three decades now).

So, in that context, what to make of Dr. Griffin’s recent offering over at Aviation Week’s blog (first I knew they had a blog–cool)? He presents his thoughts on the next half century in space, which includes some interesting history for those who are unfamiliar with it. This part seems to me to be the foundation of his thoughts:

I will have some comments on the international scene and on the possible role of commercial space, but for much of the next five decades, the U.S. government will be the dominant entity in determining the course of human space exploration. We will, I hope, develop robust international partnerships that will enormously enhance the value of space exploration. And we must do everything possible to provide an accepting environment for commercial space entities, standing down government capability in favor of commercial suppliers whenever it becomes possible to do so. But with that said, the U.S. today is spending more than twice as much on civil space, per capita, as any other nation, and I believe this situation is unlikely to change significantly for some time. Commercial space firms offer great promise but, so far, limited performance. For a while yet, it is the U.S. government, through NASA, that determines the main course of human spaceflight.

Well, in light of the moribund state of space policy described above, is this really a good assumption? I certainly don’t buy it, and his reason for believing it isn’t very compelling. Why is “per capita” space spending an interesting metric? What matters is how much is being spent, not how much is being spent per capita. There are a couple countries over in Asia with a lot more “capita” than we have, so even if they spend less “per capita,” they could still outspend us in space. Moreover, if they come up with a more effective way to spend it (perhaps by taking their lead from developments in the US private space industry, rather than from NASA), they could in fact leapfrog us.

But as long-time readers know, I’m not that concerned with international competition from other government space programs. I think that all government space programs (at least for human spaceflight) are going to fade into irrelevancy over the next twenty years, let alone the next fifty. But in any event, as I say, that’s the assumption on which the rest of his talk is based.

From there he gets down into the budgetary weeds (probably more than we needed to know about various inflation indices, etc.) but presents a constant-dollar budget profile, with an expectation that NASA will be OK for the next five decades. But here, he reveals what I think to be his naivety:

In an attempt to offer a reasonable, but conservative, vision for government civil space activities, let us assume that NASA continues, in Fiscal 2013 and beyond, to be funded in constant dollars at the average level of the President