The new space policy expected since the loss of Columbia almost a year ago was finally announced by President Bush today.

In his speech, the president correctly pointed out that in over three decades since astronaut Eugene Cernan was the last one to kick up lunar regolith, no American, or indeed human, has been farther from the earth's surface than four hundred miles or so. In response to this tragic statistic, in stirring words, the president pronounced that "humans are headed into the cosmos." After years of watching science fiction movies, like 2001, and television shows like Star Trek, it's a message that we have grown to absorb culturally for decades, but now, for perhaps the first time, it's formal federal policy.

Whether or not it will actually result in achieving the goals that Mr. Bush laid out remains, of course, to be seen. Only the most minimal one, of starting preparatory robotic exploration of the moon in 2008, will occur within his term of office, and that only if he wins reelection this year. The rest of the objectives--completing the station and phasing out the space shuttle in 2010, manned visit to the moon in 2015, lunar base in 2020--will all occur, if at all, after he has left office.

The speech was broad brush, with details and specific architectures to be left for later, which is appropriate. Some of the few details that were revealed are a little troubling.

It's apparently the end of the Orbital Space Plane project, which is a good thing--it will probably transform itself into the new Crew Exploration Vehicle, which is apparently intended to become a modern version of the old Apollo capsule. But if I heard the speech correctly, that vehicle isn't to be ready for a decade, in 2014, while the Shuttle is scheduled to be taken out of service upon planned station completion in 2010. This implies that there will be a four-year gap during which we have no ability to get people into space, at least on a government-funded American vehicle. I suspect that this, and other issues, will be fleshed out over the next few days.

It should be noted that on that schedule, it will take us over a decade to get back to the moon, whereas we did it much faster the last time, when we knew much less about how to do it. Of course, the last time, funding was no object--a circumstance that no longer holds. It should also be noted that if the station is completed in 2010, it will be over a quarter of a century after the program was initiated--results from the new initiatives will have to be more timely to keep to the stated schedule.

Many have pointed out that the goals are not new--they're the same ones that Vice-President Spiro Agnew presented as a follow-on to Apollo during the Nixon administration, and that the president's father laid out on the Washington Mall on July 20, 1989. In both cases, they fell flat, and were eviscerated by the press and the Congress. Indeed, in the latter case, NASA itself played a role in subverting them by coming up with an outrageous cost estimate of half a trillion dollars, thus removing this potential distraction from its desired focus on the space station.

The challenge of the administration will be to prevent this initiative from similarly faltering, at least during its term. From this standpoint, the proposed schedule and funding profile is convenient, because the majority of new expenditures for this will occur, like the milestones, after the president is out of office. Most of the initial funding will come from a reallocation of already planned NASA resources, with very few new funds to be requested.

The other strategy will be to have an independent commission come up with the implementation approaches that were absent from the speech, and the president announced he was doing exactly that, to be headed by Pete Aldridge, a veteran aerospace executive. It's not a choice that I find particularly inspiring--I'm afraid that Mr. Aldridge is too deeply steeped in space industry business-as-usual, but there will be others on the commission, and I hope that there is an outreach program to seek fresh ideas and approaches.

While I'm glad that the president has stated a national goal of finally getting humans beyond earth orbit, I'm disappointed that those humans are apparently to continue to be NASA employees, who the rest of us watch, voyeuristically, on television. NASA was not just given the lead--it was apparently given sole responsibility. There was no mention of private enterprise, or of any activities in space beyond "exploration" and "science." It was encouraging to hear a president talk about the utilization of extraterrestrial resources, but only in the context of how to get to the next milestone.

This is the part of the policy that should be most vigorously debated in the coming months--not whether or not humans, and American humans, are heading into the cosmos, but how we get humans doing that who aren't only civil servants, and whether or not there are roles for other agencies, and sectors of society. Given NASA's track record, and in the interests of competition, the administration should in fact consider setting up a separate organization to manage this initiative, and put out portions of it to bid, whether from NASA, DARPA, other agencies, or the private sector.

Most of all, I hope that the administration can break out of the apparent NASA-centric mindset demonstrated in the president's speech today, and come up with a broader vision, rather than a destination, and help create a space program for, as Apple Computer used to say, the "rest of us."

Rand,

I have been reading your blog for a couple of days now, and like it quite a bit. One thing that I think may be useful for us newcomers would be an item in "Reader's Favorites" explaining your "vision." Without a more detailed view of it, I am having trouble understanding some of your criticism of NASA.

And by the way, what does that reference to 'goo goo Carl Sagan' (a couple of posts ago) mean?

Keep up the good work!

Anonymous Coward

One thing that I think may be useful for us newcomers would be an item in "Reader's Favorites" explaining your "vision." Without a more detailed view of it, I am having trouble understanding some of your criticism of NASA.

Yes. Please.

You know that means its time to write the book, Rand...

It would be more interesting if Rand and for instance, Sean O'Keefe were counterblogging.

Why and what, Did Bush mean when he said -other nations are invited to join us in the indeavor- I hope he is not planning to pull another space station partnership!

BTW, "unmanned probes to moon by 2008" ... what was _that_ all about ? Any specifics ? There are probes en route to the moon as we speak, more are scheduled, and several have gone before ???

If you take this bogus 2008 milestone away, the timetable will look even more desolate.

Question -

If the orbiter is to be scrapped by 2010, why bother to pay the price tag needed to return it to flight status? Rather like buying tires for a car on the way to the junkyard, no?

This shuttle B idea seems to offer twice the payload for half the price:

http://www.nsschapters.org/ny/nyc/Shuttle-Derived%20Vehicles%20Modified.pdf

Then come 2010 America will still have significant heavy lift capability rather than a speculative CEV perhaps launched by Atlas or Delta EELV.

And, if the RS-68 uncrewed shuttle idea can deliver two ISS packages per launch, rather than one using the orbiter, the cost of development can be charged against the missions we can cancel.

A new reliable heavy lift system with NO change to the current budget.

Anyway, how much will it cost to make the shuttle flight ready? And how much breath-holding will we experience when it does fly? Stand down the orbiter TODAY and move to a new launch system with the savings.

I just saw an item on space.com that claims "internal White House documents" not only mention Mars but the asteroids and the moons of Jupiter as possible future destinations for manned spaceflight. If so, somebody is certainly feeling visionary...but aren't the inner three Galilean moons pretty well bathed in radiation? And it's a long haul out there -- better hope Project Prometheus produces some results between now and 2050 or whenever.

One other thing comes to mind, in the controversy between robots and astronauts. Is there any guarantee that the money freed up by eliminating sending people anywhere will go straight into the bucket earmarked for robo-probes? The figure I heard was that it costs a billion dollars to send a ball bearing to Saturn. Additional weight costs a fraction of that, but a billion dollars is the minimum entrance fee. If anti-space types are going to claim that the costs of putting people up there takes milk out of the mouths of starving children, why would they green-light a proposal to study the atmosphere of Titan? A billion dollars would build some fine hospitals and day-care centers, and why should we care about finding out some useless knowledge about rocks umpteen zillion miles away? Sometimes I'm amazed we've gotten as far as we have with the unmanned scouting of the outer solar system...

As a somewhat correlary comment to Dwight's, on both CNN and McNeil/Lehrer tonight there were "space experts" who were clearly skeptical of the whole manned flight idea - the professor on McNeil/Lehrer was the more outspoken of the two, saying that since "robots are merely an extension of a human being," actually going to Mars is redundant, and "Mars is probably as far as we'll (ever) be able to get, the rest of the solar system is too far, too filled with radiation, has too much gravity" for humans to explore there. Aside from the lack of imagination of the latter statement - our current limitations are hardly eternal, that's one of the key ideas of scientific progress - what I find disturbing about the lets-only-go-robotic critics is what looks to me like their shortsightedness. Yes, people find images from a Mars robot neat, but would there be nearly the same enthusiasm for unmanned space exploration if the decision was made to scrap all manned travel for generations to come? Seems to be a lot of the solely-robotics arguments are made from academic/scientific "white towers" where folks assume everyone's as interested in pure research as they are. I think their argument that all those billions being spent on manned travel could pay for so many more robotic probes assumes that the American taxpayer would be OK with that, whereas I think the reaction could instead be "Well, if we're not going there ever, why bother looking?"

My guess is that we'll be a triplanetary system for the foreseeable future as far as major settlements go. Venus is pretty hopeless and Jupiter is pretty far (and sizzling with radiation). Mars is relatively benign and the Moon has location, location, and location going for it. But that leaves one significant body that is closer than Jupiter, but which everybody seems to be ignoring. Maybe something can be done with Mercury? After all, it's even supposed to have buried icecaps at the poles (!). Once the infrastructure is in place for regular Earth/Mars service, ships can used for visits elsewhere. The first expedition to Mercury might make for one heck of a National Geographic special. I don't know about later exploitation, though I once heard somebody suggest Mercury might be just the place to build the anti-matter factory for making starship fuel. Plenty of solar energy and it won't matter a whole lot if you accidentally blow half the planet away.

"Venus is pretty hopeless and Jupiter is pretty far (and sizzling with radiation). "
Venus is FAR from hopeless. In fact, conditions in venusian upper atmosphere, above clouds, is most earthlike you can find anywhere in currently known solar system.
Pressure, temperature, sunlight availability, chemical composition. Its a limit of our imagination, that we cant think of flying research bases or floating cities, even though dirigibles and hot-air balloons are older than any of us. Get this, venus wouldnt need HOT air, regular, breathable air filled balloon would stay afloat ..
This is not to pitch venus as a focus of expansion. Theres first so much to do closer at home, going anywhere farther than a couple lightseconds is of little practical use, right now.

I figure developing/mining the asteroid belt will be the next step after settling Mars. There's a few (asteroids) which are theoretically big enough to base on, but the logistics and details of how that might be done I trust future generations to work out. Still, such bases may be useful way-stations on the way from Earth-Mars to Jupiter and the outer solar system.

I am listening to a NASA TV recording of Sean O'Keefe's press briefing yesterday. When queried about Shuttle-C for ISS cargo resupply after STS is retired, the Administrator replied that "entrepeneurial commercial sources" need to be considered.

There's hope.

easterbrook in his blog over at the new republic has a more sober perspective. he asks (and answers) what we'd do on the moon (nothing), and how much going to mars would cost (alot).

Mars is different from the moon because it's out of the magnetosphere of earth--a spacecraft has to have tons of shielding to have people on it. in fact, spirit's life span on mars is only 3 months, due to dust and radiation.

if you remember, easterbrook wrote an article way back in 1980 saying the shuttle was a dog, and dangerous--well before the two explosions.

Isn't the atmospher of Venus "H2SO4"?

Some of it. Also, I believe, CO2 and various other stuff. And if I'm not totally out to lunch, wouldn't atmospheric H2SO4 be, like, heavy? And thus, you know, down closer to the surface?