I’m a little delinquent in responding to this, because Adam Keiper pointed it out to me last weekend, but it’s been a busy week. Gregg Easterbrook is determined to waste my time having to correct him.

There’s no reason right now to go back to the moon, other than as make-work for aerospace contractors. For 30 years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (nasa) has sent no automated probes to the moon, because no one has proposed anything compelling for even robots to do there.

There are many reasons to go back to the moon. We (literally) barely scratched its surface thirty-plus years ago. There are abundant resources there to potentially establish settlements, to produce clean abundant power, to produce propellant, and for the narrow-minded people (like, apparently, Gregg) who think that the only reason to spend money on space is science, there remains a great deal of science to do there.

Gregg is simply wrong. Many people have proposed things for both people and robots to do. They may not have been compelling to NASA, or Gregg Easterbrook, but neither of those two entities have shown themselves to be reliable indicators as to what is, or should be, compelling to others.

Going from Earth’s surface to orbit requires a lot of energy and is very expensive with existing technology. At the current space shuttle launch price of $20 million per ton, merely placing 1,000 tons of Mars-bound equipment into orbit would cost $20 billion–more than nasa’s entire annual budget. And that’s just the cost to launch the stuff. Design, construction, staffing, and support would all cost much more.

The problem with this is that Gregg remains mired in the belief that Shuttle is “existing technology,” when in fact for the most part it is thirty-year-old technology. As I’ve pointed out before, Shuttle is an absurd benchmark for cost of launch in estimating costs of doing things in space in the twenty-first century.

These are reasons why, when Bush’s father asked nasa in 1989 about sending people to Mars, the Agency estimated a total program cost of $400 billion for several missions. That inflates to $600 billion in today’s money and sounds about right as an estimate

Yes, Gregg, there are reasons why the agency estimated that cost. Reason 1: they decided to use the program to justify everything that every center was doing. Reason 2: they didn’t really want to do it, desiring to continue to focus on space station instead, and they in fact actively lobbied against it on the Hill, an act for which Dick Truly was later canned by George Herbert Walker Bush. Non-reason: it bears some resemblance to what such a program would have to cost.

In fact, it’s absurd to worry about the cost of such a program right now, or to try to stretch absurd examples to attempt to estimate it, as Gregg mistakenly does, in this and other recent articles. We have no idea what it will cost, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be a goal of the nation. When it comes down to actual designs, and plans, and cost estimates, then will be the time to criticize it and decide whether it’s worth the money at that point in time, or to wait until some better plan (or technology) comes along. But it’s pointless to take potshots at it now, and to say that we shouldn’t do it because the Gregg Easterbrooks of the world can’t figure out how to do it cheaply.

One of the frustrating things about Easterbrook is that in any wrongheaded column, he always somehow finds a way to say things with which I agree:

…while a Mars visit would be an exhilarating moment for human history, planning for Mars before improving space technology is putting the cart ahead of the horse. Nasa’s urgent priority should be finding a new system of placing pounds into orbit: If there were some less costly, safer way to reach space than either the space shuttle or current rockets, then grand visions might become affordable.

But it’s still not quite clear if he’s got it right, because I don’t know what he means by “find.” If he means develop a Shuttle replacement that somehow operates more cheaply, this would be another programmatic disaster, but if he means to simply put out basic requirements to the private sector and purchase services from whoever can meet them, then I am in a hundred percent agreement. But I’ve never seen anything in any of his writing to indicate that this is what he as in mind. He seems to remain in the mindset that NASA should do the thing, it’s just that they’re not doing the right one.

As long as he remains stuck in that stale, four-decade-old paradigm, he’ll continue to write uninformed articles like this, in which he occasionally arrives at the right result, for entirely the wrong reason.

Late January has developed a reputation as a grim and fatal period in NASA’s history.

Thirty-seven years ago this Tuesday, on the 27th, Apollo astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee died horribly, of asphyxiation and rapid incineration in an Apollo capsule on the Saturn launch pad. Destined for the moon, they never got off the ground in the vehicle that was to take them there.

The event caused a massive overhaul of the Apollo program, but NASA recovered, and two and a half years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon and, per President Kennedy’s audacious goal, returned safely to the earth.

Eighteen years ago today, on January 28th, 1986, the space shuttle orbiter Challenger was torn apart by aerodynamic forces as it separated from a collapsing fuel tank and its solid boosters. Just as their mission was beginning, seven astronauts fell to their deaths, from a great height, in what remained of the vehicle.

That accident resulted in two and a half, in fact almost three, years of delay until the shuttle flew again, as well as a supposed change in NASA management.

Apparently, there wasn’t enough change, because now, in 2004, coming close on the heels of those two tragedies, NASA has another sad date to commemorate. This coming Sunday, February 1, will be the first anniversary of the loss of the orbiter Columbia with its seven gallant crew.

How long it will be before shuttles fly again is now anybody’s guess. The goal is late this year which, if it occurs, will be shorter than the hiatus from Challenger, but there’s also a good chance that it will stretch into 2005.

Is there any reason, physical or psychological, for this close clustering of fateful anniversaries?

Probably not.

Certainly the Apollo I fire had nothing to do with the season–it occurred in a controlled environment that was indifferent to the weather outside.

Challenger would arguably not have occurred in the summer, since it was caused by an O-ring below rated temperature, but there are many weeks that it gets cold in central Florida, not just January’s end.

If the prevailing theory about Columbia is correct, the damage to its thermal protection system was caused by falling foam, not ice, and even if it was ice, this can happen any time of year due to the cryogenic temperatures of the external tank. It could have occurred regardless of the date–it was purely bad luck. Or perhaps a better description, to be more in line with the findings of the Gehman Commission, is a string of luck running out on a flawed mindset.

It’s just coincidence, but engineers–even NASA engineers–are human, and in any future manned spaceflight activities this time of year, one suspects that they’ll have their fingers crossed, even if hidden in their pockets, for many years to come.

But in light of such a history, just how risk averse, how devoted to crew safety, should NASA be? Were our past decades’ achievements in space worth the cost, in lives and treasure?

To some, the answer is obvious. No expense, no course of action, should be spared to prevent the deaths of astronauts, even if that means they don’t fly at all. They should not risk their lives on any mission “needlessly.” This is the argument often used by opponents of manned spaceflight in general.

Of course, such a position makes no sense when even cursorily examined. If that philosophy were applied to other endeavors in life, we’d remain in the caves today, or perhaps even in the trees. No minerals would be mined, nor autos driven (did you really need to go to the store for that ice cream?), no bridges or skyscrapers would be built, because sometimes, in these activities, people die. Any activity resulting in human progress entails risk.

And who is to decide what “needlessly” means? Certainly, if you have no interest in putting people into space (as, for instance, is the case with many scientists), then any manned spaceflight is needless. “No, no,” they say. “We just mean that we shouldn’t be doing things in space that can be done better with robots.”

But that of course begs the meaning of the word “better.”

Why don’t we mine coal exclusively with robots? Why didn’t we develop robots in the 1930s to build the Golden Gate Bridge, an undertaking that cost dozens of lives? In some cases we do, of course, but not to achieve a risk-free state (which isn’t possible) so much as to save costs through increased productivity. But that’s not the argument that people who say we shouldn’t “risk lives” for “needless activities” seem to be making.

Let’s take a concrete, and topical example. NASA has effectively decided to deorbit the Hubble Space Telescope, an instrument that has opened up vast new vistas of the universe. Some have decried this decision as the first casualty of the president’s new space initiative.

Of course, it’s not that simple. Hubble was designed to use only the shuttle for servicing, but the shuttle is now focused on the ISS. We will have limited shuttle flights available, even after we return to flight, and we have international commitments to the latter, but not the former.

But the real issue is that, as a result of last year’s tragedy, we have made a policy decision to never again send an orbiter into the wilderness–to an orbit from which the vehicle cannot be easily inspected and the crew easily rescued. This means effectively that all future shuttle flights must go to ISS, and barring some alternative means of saving it, Hubble will come down.

That’s not the decision I would have made, if the only choices are using a Shuttle or letting Hubble die. Yes, Shuttle missions are expensive, but we’re flying them anyway–we might as well do something that’s of clear value with them. Yes, astronauts’ lives will be at risk, but that’s their decision to make, not pundits and scientists. Yes, another orbiter will be at risk, but we’ve already decided to phase out the program, and it actually could limp along on two through ISS completion, if necessary.

In any event, it’s not really that risky. We went seventeen years without a loss of an orbiter. The probability that we’ll lose another in the next two or three years is pretty low. We’re may be playing Russian Roulette, but that’s a misleading analogy for a gun with a hundred empty chambers and a short game.

On the other hand, the decision may prove a blessing in disguise, because there may in fact be other options to save Hubble, if NASA can expand their thinking and contemplate alternative and innovative approaches. This may be a golden opportunity to see if some new, non-government players can start to undertake risky but worthwhile ventures, free of the fear of Congressional inquisitions, and undaunted by deadly anniversaries.

[Update at 4 PM PST]

As some probably guessed, this is today’s Fox column.

Clark Lindsey, who’s covering space stuff much better than I could hope to right now, given my schedule, has some thoughts about the effect of seeing Mars on the public:

The article speculates that this sort of remote sensing of Mars via the internet will satisfy the public’s interest in the planet. I think it will have quite the opposite effect. The landers’ imagery transforms Mars from an abstraction into a real place and will entice and inspire many either to want to go there themselves or at least to want to see living, breathing, thinking representatives of the human race go there and report back their impressions and experiences in person.

No daily permalinks yet, so scroll down to January 27th. There are other good links and info there as well. And listen to Clark on The Space Show tonight. There will be a live stream available here.

There’s a second installment up of Keith Cowing and Frank Sietzen’s history of the decision to reformulate national space policy. It has additional detail on the plan, and indicates that the planned gap between Shuttle end and CEV operations is three years, not four (earliest lunar flight possibly in 2013), to be filled with Russian capability.

Here’s the part that I found interesting, and hasn’t been discussed much.

With a new focus on human exploration, the ISS will now be focused specifically on human physiology and factors needed to flight certify humans for long-duration space travel. Any research failing to contribute to this focus will be dropped from NASA’s space station research plan.

So-called microgravity science investigations into metallurgical and materials sciences will be dropped, as will overtly commercial and fundamental life science research that does not have a human life science linkage.

Other nations will likely continue their own research plans using their resource allocations on the ISS — but the U.S. portion will have a human exploration focus first and foremost. And even that will probably end by the middle of the next decade, with the station possibly taken over by the international partners, or perhaps a commercial concern.

The station has always had incompatible requirements (an inevitable result of the decision to have a single station) and this is one of them. Life sciences cause disturbances that interfere with good-quality microgravity, necessary for the materials research. This decision doesn’t make that problem go away–it just makes it the Europeans’ and Japanese’ problem. We’ll do our treadmill work and exercise, while they get exercised over the poor quality of their lab environment, until we pull out and hand it over to them.

But at least we’re starting to develop a sane policy toward station. Despite all the hype over the years, microgravity research has never panned out in accordance with the hoopla and promises. Perhaps there is still some potential there, but it will await a dedicated station that’s affordable to access on a timely basis. ISS never was that, and perhaps never will be.

Greg Klerkx, who I met at the EZ-Rocket rollout a couple years ago, has a piece in the NYT that resonates with my Fox column this week: The Citizen Astronaut.

Greg also has an interesting-looking book out, that I’ll have to read before finishing mine, so as to avoid redundancy.

You know, correcting Gregg Easterbrook’s malanalysis of space issues could be a full-time job in itself. It’s dismaying that people who should be intelligent enough to otherwise know better glom onto them in order to validate their own unknowledgable preconceptions on the subject. And by the way, it’s no insult to be called unknowledgable on these issues. Few people are, even many in the space industry. To become so requires a huge investment in time and study that few have the time for.

I find it particularly frustrating, because there is so much to legitimately criticize in the recent proposal, NASA, and space policy in general, but the opportunities to do so are drowned out by better known, but far less knowledgable people who rest on their laurels from a few lucky shots against the shuttle a quarter of a century ago.

I don’t really have time, but since he gets entirely too much credibility in the blogosphere and elsewhere, I’ll take apart his latest bit of misinformation.

Just the cost numbers for the Crew Exploration Vehicle alone–forget all the probes, colonies, and other stuff–make Bush’s announcement yesterday an all-time monument to budgetary low-balling. He declared that for the next five years, $12 billion will be devoted to the Moon-Mars initiative. That, the president said, is enough to fund new the Moon probes and development of the ill-named Crew Exploration Vehicle. This figure is utterly ridiculous, a mere fraction of what will be entailed in anything beyond some “paper spacecraft”–engineers’ lingo for studies and Power Point presentations of hardware that never gets built. Boeing expects to spend around $7.5 billion merely to develop the new 7E7 jetliner, which will stay within the atmosphere and use very well-understood engineering. The development cost of the Crew Exploration Vehicle will be several times greater

This paragraph is chock full of nonsense. He’s doing something worse than comparing apples to oranges–he’s comparing space capsules to commercial airliners. There is no way to infer the costs of one from the other–they are totally irrelevant to each other. One carries hundreds of people, has to fly thousands of times, provides its own propulsion, has to meet all requirements of FAA certification. The other is simply a can that carries four people or so, with basic subsystems like a reaction-control system, avionics, life support, with thermal protection and a recovery system if it’s going to do an entry. And in fact, it’s also “well-understood engineering,” and has been since 1968 or so. It may be expensive, but there’s no way to tell by looking at airliners.

The best way to tell is to do a parametric cost analysis on it. It’s basically an upgraded Apollo capsule (and perhaps service module for modest propulsion and additional consumables). We know how much that cost the first time, and it should be easier now, particularly considering the technology advances over the past four decades (e.g., computer microization). If NASA can’t develop that vehicle in a few years for a few billion, it should be disbanded.

The timetable is also a low-ball. Bush declared that the Crew Exploration Vehicle would be tested in 2008, just four years from now. There’s no way on Earth, as it were, this could happen without a cost-no-object crash program to rival Apollo. The Air Force’s new F22 fighter has been in development for 13 years; an entire new spaceship can be developed in four years?

I didn’t hear Bush say that. 2008 was the first robotic probes of the moon in anticipation of a manned return seven years later.

If we could develop such a thing in four years the first time on an Apollo budget, why couldn’t we affordably do it again in ten years (first flight is supposed to be 2014) on a less urgent basis?

[Update]

Commenter Duncan Young says that Gregg is right on this point, but that doesn’t make him right that it can’t be done. As I said, it’s perfectly feasible to develop and test a capsule, and associated service module, in four years, particularly since we already know how to do it, and have done it before. Apollo was a crash program, but the capsule itself wasn’t really a long pole. As an aside, this is probably the only major development that will have to occur during Bush’s term of office.

[/Update]

It may be that we can’t, but Gregg certainly offers no coherent reasons why we can’t, except with another absurd comparison–to a multi-mission fighter that’s gotten into a lot of political problems with interservice rivalries, and which again, fly hundreds of sorties and have to be maintainable by high-school grads.

And I don’t know what Gregg means by “spaceship,” unless it’s a way of intimidating his readership into thinking that he’s one of them there “rocket scientists,” and knows what he’s talking about. If he means a “ship” that flies in space, there’s nothing inherently expensive or difficult about that.

It’s just a capsule. It’s not a launcher.

But if, as Bush declared, it will be capable both of flying back and forth to the space station and of flying to the Moon, we’re talking quite a machine.

You mean, like the Apollo capsule, which was capable of both flying back and forth to the moon, and to Skylab (and to meet a Soyuz)?

Quite a machine. How ever will we do it?

Alternatively, a smarter approach might be to construct one spaceship that always stays in space, looping back and forth between Earth and Moon; people, supplies, and fuel would be launched to meet the ship in Earth-orbit, but the ship itself would never come down. (This was a Werner von Braun idea.) That would mean design, engineering, and construction of a type of flying machine that has never existed before. Development of the space shuttle cost between $50 billion and $100 billion in current dollars, depending on whose estimate you believe. The idea that something more challenging, the first-ever true spaceship, can be developed for $12 billion is bunkum.

I hesitate to call ideas loopy, but this one is literally. He says that it would be smarter, then he says it would “mean design, engineering, and construction of a type of flying machine that has never existed before.” He’s criticizing a plan that doesn’t require that as being unaffordable and requiring decades, and then proposing one that’s undefined and has never been done before as somehow “smarter.” On what planet?

Again, this is not a Shuttle. This is not an airliner. It’s not a fighter jet.

It’s a supersized Apollo capsule. We have an existence proof that we know how to build them. It will be easier now than it was forty years ago, honest. If we need a separate lander to get down to the lunar surface, we know how to build those, too. It’s even possible to develop things in parallel, though I suspect that only the capsule will be required for the 2008 date, so they have something to replace the Shuttle capability for crew transfer in 2010.

And what’s going to put this Crew Exploration Vehicle into orbit? No rocket that exists in the world today is capable of lifting the Apollo capsule and Moon lander of the late 1960s. Unless the Moon-bound twenty-first-century Crew Exploration Vehicle is going to be significantly smaller than the Apollo of a generation ago–carrying just one person and no supplies–a new, very large rocket will be required.

No, Gregg, we have acquired no experience with docking vehicles, or orbital mating over the past four decades. It’s inconceivable that we could launch a capsule on one flight of a Delta or Atlas, and a service module on another flight, and hook them up in LEO. We have to redevelop Saturn.

And of course, even if one is truly unknowledgable enough to believe that, we could develop a Shuttle-derived launch vehicle with Saturn-like capability in about four years for a billion or three (though that’s a separate budget than the one for the Crew Exploration Vehicle). We’ve known how to do that since the eighties. We haven’t done it because there’s been no need, not because it can’t be done, or because it’s unaffordable.

We shouldn’t expect George W. Bush himself to know that $12 billion is not enough to develop a spaceship. We should expect the people around Bush, and at the top of NASA, to know this. And apparently they are either astonishingly ill-informed and na

In response to today’s Fox News column (it’s a reprise of this post from last night, with a new title), I got a couple emails from a Richard Lasher, who, judging by his email address, works for the government of the state of ten thousand lakes. Unfortunately, he’s no Lileks:

I do not support ANY form of HUMAN space initiative. There is nothing we can “discover” that is worth just 1 human life! We should require a 500 year moratorium on space initiatives. The funds, resources, and energy should be devoted to solving REAL problems, here on Earth! If, after the 500 years, we are not extinct, do not live in caves, or only have pre-industrial age
technology, then we should ask, “Are there any problems on Earth yet to solve?”, and finding NONE, then consider space exploration.

Don’t we have enough problems to solve? Drugs, Terrorists, HIV, SARS, children (American and worldwide) going to bed sick and hungry, an army (700,000 – 1 Million) of illegal aliens entering the U.S. every year, worldwide social issues of poverty, genocide, labor laws, environmental, and human rights issues need to be solved BEFORE “The World” should spend money on space exploration! To do otherwise is OBSCENE”. What’s the hurry? Our Sun won’t destroy the Earth for several Billion years. Perhaps, if we survive for another million years we will have learned compassion (greed will no longer be a “GOD”) and how to use the resources of the Earth to the benefit of ALL mankind, not just the rich, not just the multi-national corporations, not the warlords supported by drug money, or corrupt governments.

A few minutes later, thinking that the first one hadn’t gone through, he sent another gem (he’s apparently not familiar with the concept of a “sent” folder that allows one to resend emails). To wit (or in this case, lackwit):

I hope you got the text from my previous e-mail… It was really “good stuff” ;-}

My system prematurely sent the e-mail.

In Short. Stop human space initiatives, and focus on the real problems that we have here on Earth for the next 500 years and then see if space exploration should be a priority. What can we learn from human space travel that is worth just 1 human life? We can’t go far enough to escape the Sun’s destruction of the Earth is several billion years.

Who cares if the Earth is 13.57678765533445809987654345 Billion or Trillion years old? What can you do with than information? Who cares if the Universe was created by a “Big Bang” or a “Big Implosion”, or the result of some “String thing”? What can you do with that information? Nothing! Who cares if Mars ever had water or Microbes? There is no surface water there now! Do we plan to import subterranean water from Mars, if there is any? NO!!!! So What, if there are live microbes on Mars? Who is to say that WE did not put them there by crashing into Mars on previous landing attempts? If there are microbe fossils, WHO CARES? That would say, “We are not alone in the Universe”, if you equate human life to that of a microbe. It might be the same microbe that “got life started” on Earth, and even IF you could prove it, WHO CARES?

Space exploration is a shiny trinket, but we need to solve the tough problems here on Earth first!

“God help us” if we find anything of value on the Moon! We could have WW3 over that future resource!

It’s a treasure trove of idiocy, complete with cranky idiosynchratic capitalization and lots of exclamation marks!! So we know it’s really important, and must be true!!!!

It’s not really worth fisking, and I’m busy today, but I thought I’d throw out some chum to the sharks in the comments section. I may get around to addressing it later if the mood strikes and I find some time.

[Update]

Here’s another one, though not quite as bad, in an email with the subject “mars fantasy”:

Every one is so positive about this new space program that was proposed by our president.

Balderdash! Are these people crazy? The war on terror is till continuing and will continue through our lifetime. Along with a huge national debt which is wrongly considered by neo-conservatives to be inconsequential. One accident in several years and we change everything around. Did anyone not think the space program to be dangerous? Loss of life was to be expected and will still happen in the new program.

The Mars mission had been proposed by Lyndon Larouche many years ago. It was to cost in the neighborhood of one trillion dollars. At the time his idea was ignored and he was considered to be a nut case. Isn’t he now in jail?

The present approach is correct. The space shuttle is needed to put satellites in orbit, take them from orbit, and perform repairs. As well as for the construction of a space station; which will be necessary sooner or later. A prime example of the need for the space shuttle is the Hubble telescope which was a Major Triumph of the space program. Sadly I just learned that it has been admitted by these people that elimination of the space shuttle would mean that there would not be any more missions to the space telescope. And probably the enhanced space telescope would be canceled also. The news said that the telescope would degrade gradually and that this was very unfortunate. I call this ignorant; big time. Telescopes above the Earth’s atmosphere are a part of the effort to explore space.

I have just read a book on the history of astronomy that was published in 1957. In that book it was mentioned that Dr. Werner Von Braun had a plan for going to the moon and Mars. It consisted of a space station at 1,000 miles above the Earth that would be used for the refueling, repair and construction of vehicles for traveling to the planets. He is said to consider that travel to the planets would be a simple task once the space station was in operation. Do we have anyone of the stature of Dr. Von Braun today or is every government agency staffed by party hacks that have not been educated in technical matters. Not to mention the numerous commissions.

I am ashamed of what the present administration has done. Are there no serious dissenters?

Gotta like a guy who uses the word “balderdash.”

Even ignoring the mistaken notion that we can’t walk and chew gum, or kill terrorists and explore the solar system at the same time, among the many other problems with this is, of course, the “poisoning the well” fallacy. Just because some reprehensible person advocates a position doesn’t discredit the position. Hitler was militantly anti-smoking. I wonder if Michael thinks that therefore we should be even more firmly in favor of it?

Laughing Wolf thinks that there may be a method to Dubya’s madness in not mentioning private enterprise in tonight’s speech (beyond the fact that he gave the speech at NASA HQ). Here’s hoping he’s right, but even if it isn’t the president’s intent, it may be the effect, which is just as good if it works out.

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.”

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.”