There are two sources on space policy who I wish that journalists covering space would remove from their rolodexes, or at least not have them at the top: John Pike, and Gregg Easterbrook.

Well, the latter has a piece in Wired that is typically infuriating.

Let's start off with the very first paragraph:

Here is a set of rational priorities for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in descending order of importance: (1) Conduct research, particularly environmental research, on Earth, the sun, and Venus, the most Earth-like planet. (2) Locate asteroids and comets that might strike Earth, and devise a practical means of deflecting them. (3) Increase humanity's store of knowledge by studying the distant universe. (4) Figure out a way to replace today's chemical rockets with a much cheaper way to reach Earth orbit.

Well, OK.

He starts off by poisoning the well. Obviously, since anyone who disagrees with his "rational" priorities is irrational, what's the point in arguing with him?

Well, despite the fact that Gregg considers me irrational, I'll dispute his priorities.

Ignoring the (in my opinion) irrationality of even his order, let us take them one by one.

(1) Conduct research, particularly environmental research, on Earth, the sun, and Venus, the most Earth-like planet.

OK. Even granted (just for the sake of the argument) that this is an important thing to do, why is it an important thing for NASA to do? Venus, OK (though it's not obvious that we'll really learn that much more about greenhouse from it that we don't already know by spending a lot more money on it), but why earth? Why, for instance, isn't this a job for NOAA? Has Gregg read the NASA charter? For that matter, has Gregg observed NASA's general performance over the past half century since its inception? If this is his number one priority, why would he want NASA to do it? If something was important to me to happen, the last place I'd want to see in charge of it (particularly given the rest of Gregg's fulminations) is NASA.

Yes, it involves remote sensing satellites, but so what? DoD does those. NOAA does as well (though it relies on NASA to help with program management, but there's no intrinsic reason for that). Even the NSF could do it. All any government agency that wants data has to do is put out a bid for the data, and select a contractor to provide it. NASA no longer has any unique expertise in this.

Now, to go on to his second priority, looking for things that are going to hit us from beyond, I agree that this is an important function, and not just for the nation, but for the planet.

But again, why does he think that this is NASA's responsibility? Once again, read the agency's charter. If there's any government agency responsible for protecting the planet against predictable natural events, I'd say that it's the Army Corps of Engineers. I'm not (mind you) saying that the ACE is particularly good at this sort of thing, but at least it's within its charter. I'd say that the recent fiasco in which NASA didn't even want to let the public read its own report on the subject would be ample reason to not want the agency in charge of it.

So, let's take on numero tres: Increase humanity's store of knowledge by studying the distant universe.

OK. That's nice. It's even within the agency's charter. But why is it number three? Why not number one, or number ten? He doesn't say. Knowledge for knowledge' sake is great, but how does one prioritize it even among other federal science activities (including the National Science Foundation, let alone the federal discretionary budget. let alone the entire federal budget)?

And last (and also, I agree with him, least), replacing chemical rockets. But I agree with him for different reasons than he might think. Gregg continues to suffer from the (to use a phrase from a former roommate and fellow space activist) "zippy whammo drive" syndrome. He has managed to delude himself that the reason that space access costs so much is because we use those crude chemical rockets.

Well, I've debunked that notion many times, but Gregg continues to not get it (probably because, among other things, he doesn't read me).

So, what does he think that NASA is doing?

(1) Maintain a pointless space station. (2) Build a pointless Motel 6 on the moon. (3) Increase humanity's store of knowledge by studying the distant universe. (4) Keep money flowing to favored aerospace contractors and congressional districts.

Well, he's got the order wrong. Number 4 is actually Priority Numero Uno. And it's absurd to think that NASA has a priority to build anything on the moon, given the architecture they've chosen to do so. They certainly show no signs of building the hardware necessary to actually get to the moon, given that they decided instead to spend all their money building a new unneeded launch vehicle and a capsule to get people into orbit without the Shuttle.

Of course, it's reasonable to be upset that some of the earth observing missions have been cancelled, but that wasn't because NASA wants to "build a Motel 6 on the moon," pointless or otherwise. It's because of specific architecture choices that NASA has made that are eating up all the available budget, and are bound to auger in, one way or another, as has been extensively discussed over the past few days.

For a sense of how out of whack NASA priorities have become, briefly ponder that plan. Because the Apollo missions suggested there was little of pressing importance to be learned on the moon, NASA has not landed so much as one automated probe there in three decades. In fact, the rockets used by the Apollo program were retired 30 years ago; even space enthusiasts saw no point in returning to the lunar surface. But now, with the space station a punch line and the shuttles too old to operate much longer, NASA suddenly decides it needs to restore its moon-landing capability in order to build a "permanent" crewed base. The cost is likely to be substantial — $6 billion is the annual budget of the space station, which is closer to Earth and quite spartan compared with what even a stripped-down moon facility would require. But set that aside: What will a moon base crew do? Monitor equipment — a task that could easily be handled from an office building in Houston.

In 2004, former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, now an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin, calculated that NASA can place objects on the moon for $26,000 a pound. At that price, each bottle of water a crew member uncaps will cost the taxpayer $13,000. Even if the new moon rocket being designed by NASA cuts launch costs in half, as agency insiders hope, that's still $6,500 for one Aquafina (astronauts and moon base are extra). Prices like this quickly push the total construction bill for any serious facility into the hundreds of billions of dollars. A private company facing such numbers would conclude that a moon base is an absurd project — at least until a fundamentally different way of reaching space is found — and would put its capital into the development of new propulsion technologies. But NASA takes a cost-is-no-object approach that appeals only to those who personally benefit from the spending.

Of course, a private company wouldn't make the mistake of extrapolating costs based on how NASA does it, or of failing to understand (as Gregg apparently does) that it's all about economies of scale. As for the "fundamentally different way of reaching space," it's hard to know what he means, but I'd say that private industry is actually working on that right now, as he notes in the next paragraph, though probably not in the way Gregg seems to expect, with faerie dust or something--no, they'll be using good old chemical rockets, just a lot more of them with higher flight rates.

I agree with him that NASA needs to change its priorities, but that's not NASA's fault--it's the fault of the Congress and the administration. But even if it did, despite Gregg's confidence in his own "rationality," it's not at all clear that NASA 's priorities should be his. Or mine. We continue to suffer from the fact that we never had the national debate on what we should be doing in space that I hoped for after Columbia. And unfortunately, we're unlikely to do so, because space is just too low a political priority to most people, compared to issues like the war, immigration, etc.

The only people to whom space is important enough to do it right are those who are doing it with their own money. So Gregg had better hope that he's wrong about his assessments of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. I'm more sanguine about the future, if not NASA, because I'm pretty sure he is.

Mr. Easterbrook should reserve his thoughts to his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column.

The underlying problem with the list is the belief that NASA is the only government agency spending funds on space. And so we have the urban myth that if the nation does something in space NASA must do it.

In terms of lowering the cost to space, NASA is the last agency I would assign the job to for building low cost reliable launchers. That is because such vehicles are not key to what NASA perceives its mission to be. The ESAS illustrates that more then anything.

Who I would assign that job to would be the DOD which desperately needs cheap reliable responsive access to space for a number of military missions. This is even more true following the Chinese ASAT test. Remember the military was behind DC-X and has and is still funding numerous efforts to develop responsive space launch systems. Indeed the only real RLV work going on now is under DOD funding.

My second choice would be the DOT, which again has a vested interest in developing new transportation systems. One need only look at how the FAA AST has been working with the sub-orbital community to see their interest in the effort.

NASA would be my last choice.

The reason is that NASA has mismanaged and killed off any RLV effort it has gotten involved in. Not surprising as neither their mission nor culture fits what is needed to develop such a system. Their last successful project in this area was the X-15 and that was heavily driven by the USAF wanting a space plane. The USAF still wants one. We should end the myth the NASA monopoly on government astronauts and let the USAF build its own system. It will probably be far closer to cheap reliable access to orbit then anything NASA will ever do.

I agree with you hat the military would be the best ones to handle planetary defense. That is a mission they have wanted since the 1990’s and are well qualified to carry out. Even now most of the detection technology used for findings is based on modifications of USAF space surveillance systems.

And I feel space science should have its own agency, just as we have a NIH for bioscience. Goddard and JPL would be a good core for it. And an independent budget would end the raiding by NASA for other activities like Ares I.

Earth monitoring from space should be consolidated under NOAA where it could better integrated with their oceanographic and atmospheric research. I fail to see why NASA is still involved in this area and forcing it to compete against other NASA missions.

And this generates the key question here. What should NASA’s mission really be? Or has it outlived its usefulness as a government agency?

The underlying problem with the list is the belief that NASA is the only government agency spending funds on space. And so we have the urban myth that if the nation does something in space NASA must do it.

Yes, this seems to be the major malfuction of the columnist.

Technically, that's not poisoning the well; "a set of rational priorities" labels it only as a set of priorities based on reasoning.

Not the only or necessary set of rational priorities.

I suspect he uses "rational" not to claim that reason demands one accept his priority list, but as contra a list of notional irrational priorities based on emotion or sentiment or even mere politics.

(Such as "we went to the moon, therefore we should go back to show the Chinese what's what", say.

That he doesn't mention, say, colonization or the like might suggest only that they're not rational for NASA to undertake... which I think you'd agree with, Rand.)

I could be wrong, of course, but his text is not clearly endorsing your interpretation.

I agree with Sigivald.
It is not exactly "poisoning the well". It is, however, limiting the potential outcomes by defining out anything outside the desired range of outcomes.
The "I set the definitions, so by definition I can't lose", bit.
I also disagree with your reorder of #4 to #1
It is only #2
#1 is "Protest Nasa's Turf". The (political and media inroad) infrastructure, the administrative jobs, the pretense that everyone must use NASA to get to or do anything regarding space, ect.
IMHO they have demonstrated that criteria before anything else in their priority list.

The faux mission patch with that article is pretty good, in my opinion.

I propose that NASA be converted to the Department of Funny Walks...or maybe the Department of Redundancy Department. It's slightly more rational than trying to design rockets that run on little girls' giggles or baby smiles...

I just read the article last night. Among other things, the following was hardly why Lunar exploration ended:

"Because the Apollo missions suggested there was little of pressing importance to be learned on the moon, NASA has not landed so much as one automated probe there in three decades."

There's plenty that can still be done there. Of course it was primairily political support, and the money that flows therefrom. Had Congress kept the funding taps open, we might have a signifigant human presence there (hopefully evolved into something mostly commercial, by now) today.

And of course, there have been several *non*-landing (if you don't count intentional impact) probes in the meantime. Other planets/moons have gotten the attention. Again, money and priorities.

::because space is just too low a political priority to most people

Yup. And there is a thread going on over General Discussion at nasaspaceflight forums, of what to do to spread the message of space flight better for general public, so that priority level would be changed.
guess what, as its NASAspaceflite, a bunch of people jumped in and cried "show them a shuttle launch" about twenty times til they were either blue or red in the face.
arguments that better tell them about Armadillo Arospace accomplishments or X-Prize Cup just didnt go down well at all.

so i call SNAFU

The mission of NASA should be on the leading edge of human expansion into the cosmos, and its M.O. should be whatever knowledge, technologies, and approaches best serve that agenda. Asteroid defense, environmental research, and space science will all naturally benefit from pursuing that standard.

I thought the lead article about SpaceX was quality journalism, on the other hand (the pictures are spectacular as well).

The Easterbrook article frustrated me in the reading. Perhaps I should just xacto knife that page out of the magazine.

Some reasons to take space defense seriously:

Recently discovered evidence suggests that the mass extinction and total collapse of the nascent Clovis civilisation in c. 13000BC was caused by a cometary impact somewhere in northern North America, triggering a continent-wide firestorm.

On a slightly smaller scale, city-destruction scale impacts were suffered in 1908 and 1930 (Tunguska and Brazil); both impacts were in the 50-kiloton range. There was also a slightly smaller impact in northern Norway in 2006. It is noteworthy that if the Tunguska strike had been about 6 hours earlier it would have destroyed St. Petersburg.

All these strikes were in the middle of nowhere, with minimal to zero casualties among humans. How long are we going to stay lucky? Which city is going to be the first in written history to be obliterated by a hammer from space? Let's hope it's Mecca.

The annual budget for space defense in the USA is about $10 million per year, less than is spent in a day in Iraq. Other countries are even worse, to be fair.

And the only realistic way to protect Earth is to have a large-scale presence in space; if we are threatened, simply mine the damned thing out of the way. Without such a presence, we likely won't even know it's coming.

And finally, there is a small but non-zero chance that the next one won't be another Tunguska, but another Chicxulub. What price American-style democracy in the Middle East then? Or NASA administrators' jobs?