Charles Krauthammer is generally a pretty smart guy, particularly on politics, but when it comes to space policy, he (like many) check their brains at the door and rely on emotion:
America’s manned space program is in shambles. Fourteen months from today, for the first time since 1962, the U.S. will be incapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone into Earth orbit. We’ll be totally grounded. We’ll have to beg a ride from the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.
So what, you say? Don’t we have problems here on Earth? Oh please. Poverty and disease and social ills will always be with us. If we’d waited for them to be rectified before venturing out, we’d still be living in caves.
Yes, we have a financial crisis. No one’s asking for a crash Manhattan Project. All we need is sufficient funding from the hundreds of billions being showered from Washington — “stimulus” monies that, unlike Eisenhower’s interstate highway system or Kennedy’s Apollo program, will leave behind not a trace on our country or our consciousness — to build Constellation and get us back to Earth orbit and the moon a half-century after the original landing.
Note the implicit unstated assumption (which occurs often in space policy discussion): there is nothing wrong with NASA that a sufficient and steady budget won’t cure, and that if only we would give it to them, and leave them alone, they’d be leading us into the solar system. That anyone who thinks Constellation in its currrent form an unwise expenditure is opposed not for sound technical or economic reasons, but because we oppose expanding humanity into space. That Constellation, if not perfect, is more than good enough, and we must redo Apollo and go on from there.
Despite the fact that he’s a former clinical psychiatrist, the possibility that it is a dysfunctional sclerotic bureaucracy, and that giving it the money that it requests to do what it wants to do might not only be a waste, but actually set us back in the goal that he seems so earnestly to aver, never occurs to him. That there might be better ways to achieve his goal is seemingly beyond his ken.
He must have missed the gaps before and after Apollo, not to mention the ones after Challenger and Columbia. That those gaps didn’t doom the agency says something about the importance of its’ performance, or lack thereof.
Don’t be too hard on the guy. I think he’d understand if presented with the facts and his heart is in the right place. The real problem are those that think we shouldn’t leave the cave until all of societies problems were managed (they being the managers of course.)
Part of the problem is equating the space program with technological progress. The meme is that exploration in general, and therefore the space program, is a driver for technology. It isn’t and never has been. However much I love the space program, and especially the manned space program, I simply can’t find any justification for it (which, by the way, dooms private programs as well.)
I dunno, Rand. I think you may be being a little harsh. The ugly fact is that there is at present no plain compelling economic reason for, say, a busy Earth-Moon private transportation industry. (And a reason that is subtle and takes much thought to understand, or which only a dedicated minority of fans “get,” is by definition not “compelling” to most people.) If there were a plain compelling reason, it’s hard to see why the industry wouldn’t exist by now. It’s had half a century to get moving.
I’m not sure it gets us anywhere either to say, well, imagine a cheap and safe transportation infrastructure — then there’d be a demand. Because, while true, it seems cart before the horse. In the normal way of economic development, the prize of rich economic return produces initially expensive means, and continuing economic reward results in the lowering of the cost of those means. I’m having a hard time thinking of a historical example of an industry that went all the way to optimum efficiency and price in its means before reaping serious economic benefit.
It’s reasonable to imagine a little pump-priming might develop the tech enough to lower the price, but that leads us back to NASA, or some other government agency, if you think NASA itself is permanently buggered, to take the lead.
Honestly, my impression is that most people in the private space industry, both the players and the watchers, are in it for the emotional reward just as much as Kraut is, and just as much as we cheering on Apollo were. So I don’t know if I would knock emotional reasons quite so hard. I think there’s a nontrivial chance they’re most of what sustains any major innovation in space transportation development at this point.
Krauthammer has been saying we need to go to Mars since (at least) 2000:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/204pkfxj.asp
Like some of you guys, I like his sentiment. I don’t think you can fault him for any lack of knowledge he may have about NASA. He ain’t no Simberg.
Krauthammer was implicitly harsh on the value of the Interstate Highway System. We could *use* something like that for space, to enable not only the ‘sexy’ frontier stuff…but any not so sexy, but hopefully profitable stuff happening closer to Earth.
A lot of the ‘Moonies’ and ‘Marsies’ (As Ed Wright once phrased it here…damn I liked that and I’ll keep using it) dismiss the importance of that, in the process of dumping on the Shuttle and ISS as an impediemt to their goals. (and somewhat deservedly but they don’t see the need for *an* RLV[s] and space station[s], even if not *this* RLV and space station )
Even ‘wonder and glory’ (and I do *want* that) can be acheieved in a practical, sustainable way…
Well said Carl.
I think you are a little hard on Charles Krauthammer. I don’t think he is defending the specific method NASA is using for space exploration as much as he is just defending American manned spaceflight period.
And I agree with Carl that what will move humanity into space is the dream more than the profit, as there is always easier and greater profits to be made planetside. Not that I’m knocking profits from space activities, I’m all for them since they enable even greater space activity.
there is always easier and greater profits to be made planetside.
It’s hard to imagine that statement not being true, but I sincerely believe it is ultimately false. The only thing that makes it true today is that Earth is where the economic activity is. But the Earth, with all it’s billions of people may one day be in the minority.
Before that time, many young people born elsewhere may choose to go to Earth to make their fortune… some won’t.
NASA to me is like a space oriented general motors that kills the best and the brightest every 15 years.
NASA should focus on unmanned exploration that it does pretty well and the government should pay for x-prizes to help drive private exploration.
$10 billion/year for a moon colony. $1 billion per ton of titanium returned to earth orbit from the moon or beyond. $1 billion per ton of water gathered on mars.
I don’t think he is defending the specific method NASA is using for space exploration as much as he is just defending American manned spaceflight period.
I’m sure that he thinks that he is, but in defending such a fundamentally flawed concept, he is actually damaging it. What NASA is doing has very little to do with manned spaceflight (except, perhaps, if they manage to get this ongoing disaster to the goal line, spaceflight for a few astronauts at a cost of billions per flight).
I simply can’t find any justification for it (which, by the way, dooms private programs as well.)
How does the fact that you can’t find any justification for it doom private programs?
I’m think he’s saying that a lack of justification would doom private space programs, not the fact that he can’t find one would doom them.
I’m think he’s saying that a lack of justification would doom private space programs, not the fact that he can’t find one would doom them.
That’s true, but the premise hasn’t been proven.