Closing the new frontier
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 12, 2010
“We have an agreement until 2012 that Russia will be responsible for this,” says Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency, about ferrying astronauts from other countries into low-Earth orbit. “But after that? Excuse me, but the prices should be absolutely different then!”
The Russians may be new at capitalism, but they know how it works. When you have a monopoly, you charge monopoly prices. Within months, Russia will have a monopoly on rides into space.
By the end of this year, there will be no shuttle, no U.S. manned space program, no way for us to get into space. We’re not talking about Mars or the moon here. We’re talking about low-Earth orbit, which the United States has dominated for nearly half a century and from which it is now retiring with nary a whimper.
Our absence from low-Earth orbit was meant to last a few years, the interval between the retirement of the fatally fragile space shuttle and its replacement with the Constellation program (Ares booster, Orion capsule, Altair lunar lander) to take astronauts more cheaply and safely back to space.
But the Obama 2011 budget kills Constellation. Instead, we shall have nothing. For the first time since John Glenn flew in 1962, the United States will have no access of its own for humans into space — and no prospect of getting there in the foreseeable future.
Of course, the administration presents the abdication as a great leap forward: Launching humans will be turned over to the private sector, while NASA’s efforts will be directed toward landing on Mars.
This is nonsense. It would be swell for private companies to take over launching astronauts. But they cannot do it. It’s too expensive. It’s too experimental. And the safety standards for getting people up and down reliably are just unreachably high.
Sure, decades from now there will be a robust private space-travel industry. But that is a long time. In the interim, space will be owned by Russia and then China. The president waxes seriously nationalist at the thought of China or India surpassing us in speculative “clean energy.” Yet he is quite prepared to gratuitously give up our spectacular lead in human space exploration.
As for Mars, more nonsense. Mars is just too far away. And how do you get there without the stepping stones of Ares and Orion? If we can’t afford an Ares rocket to get us into orbit and to the moon, how long will it take to develop a revolutionary new propulsion system that will take us not a quarter-million miles but 35 million miles?
To say nothing of the effects of long-term weightlessness, of long-term cosmic ray exposure, and of the intolerable risk to astronaut safety involved in any Mars trip — six months of contingencies vs. three days for a moon trip.
Of course, the whole Mars project as substitute for the moon is simply a ruse. It’s like the classic bait-and-switch for high-tech military spending: Kill the doable in the name of some distant sophisticated alternative, which either never gets developed or is simply killed later in the name of yet another, even more sophisticated alternative of the further future. A classic example is the B-1 bomber, which was canceled in the 1970s in favor of the over-the-horizon B-2 stealth bomber, which was then killed in the 1990s after a production run of only 21 (instead of 132) in the name of post-Cold War obsolescence.
Moreover, there is the question of seriousness. When John F. Kennedy pledged to go to the moon, he meant it. He had an intense personal commitment to the enterprise. He delivered speeches remembered to this day. He dedicated astronomical sums to make it happen.
At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA was consuming almost 4 percent of the federal budget, which in terms of the 2011 budget is about $150 billion. Today the manned space program will die for want of $3 billion a year — 1/300th of last year’s stimulus package with its endless make-work projects that will leave not a trace on the national consciousness.
As for President Obama’s commitment to beyond-lunar space: Has he given a single speech, devoted an iota of political capital to it?
Obama’s NASA budget perfectly captures the difference in spirit between Kennedy’s liberalism and Obama’s. Kennedy’s was an expansive, bold, outward-looking summons. Obama’s is a constricted, inward-looking call to retreat.
Fifty years ago, Kennedy opened the New Frontier. Obama has just shut it.
It is my belief that our current superiority of low orbit space is essential to our national security.The President’s first responsibility as commander in chief is to protect the people of this great nation.If it wasn’t for our control of the air we would all be speaking German or Japanese! What are these yahoo’s thinking?HELP!
If I might correct myself, as I was rushing in my note (aside from some basic clumsy finger typos)…
NASA spent over $400 million on the faked test launch of the Ares 1 (which flew a dummy vehicle to an altitude a little higher than the world’s record for skydiving) – not $40 million as I wrote. To put that in perspective. Elon Musk, Founder of the commercial firm SpaceX has spent $130 million of his own money to create develop test and successfully fly missions that have placed USG satellites and payloads into orbit.
Dear Congressman Culberson,
I know you are a good man and a good Republican but you should remove this piece of ridiulous trash from your saite. It does not do you justice.
This piece by K is absolutely and completely wrong. he knows nothing of what he speaks, and his words show it. And he certainly has no clue about how to open frontiers, space or the basic concepts of human enterprise. As a proud Texan whose roots go back to the Founding of the state and whose family co-Founded the Texas Rangers, I say that the approach we have had until now has been a disaster for this next Frontier and was about to become one for Texas. Worse, it was being sold as if it would help open space to the American people which it absolutely would Not do. Rather the sense of entitlement and turf protection engendered by those feeding on our tax dollars led to decades of lies and deceit, culminating this last fall in a faked test flight of the Ares 1 at a cost of some 40 million dollars.
The Constellation program was a complete waste and frankly was going to get the good people who have been working their collective tails off at JSC on programs and projects designed to let us explore, live and work on the Moon and Mars exactly nowhere.
This new approach, which by the way has been endorsed by a thinking Republican of no less stature then Newt Gingrich as opposed to a mindless pundit like “K”, is going to allow us to put together the toolkit we need to go anywhere, the port structure to support ongoing presence at any destination and the commercial industrial base to not only take the burden off the taxpayers shoulders, but to create whole new job and income producing industries based on space technology and resources.
This sounds like a good conservative plan. So is it because of old school turf you oppose it Sir? Or would you be willing to embrace commercial enterprise and change in the name of making sure Texas really is a space state – as opposed to a state with a government space facility in it?
Rick Tumlinson
BTW – I have testified some 6 times in front of Congress including the Senate on space policy issues. I would be glad to come visit and explain just how this new approach can help Texas and your district become new leaders in this new frontier. Don’t fight the future Sir! Embrace it and make it your own!
Congressman Culberson, This is a sad news indeed. I am a big supporter of NASA and it is extremely important for us to continue to explore the space. I live in your district, you should go and fight this out all the way.
Congressman Culberson, This is a sad news indeed. I am a big supporter of NASA as I think that they are of great importance not only to our country but to humanity and also for our comming generations. You should go fight this out all the way. I do not think the savings from this program will make a big dent on our national sceane, while we continue to give away billions in concessions to wall street and big business.
I am actually a bit shocked by your lack of faith in the capabilites of private industry.
Furthermore, the only reason private industry would not develop the technologies required to accomplish the things you mention in this piece, would be because private citizens might not be interested in going to Mars. It would become a business decision. Funding would come from people who believe in the mission.
Currently, funding for the Space program, and funding for all government funded programs, comes from overtaxed productive citizens of this nation in debt.
Sure, the budget for NASA is a small percentage of the total budget. If you would like to increase the percentage, please focus on reducing the rest of the budget. Cut spending, and cut taxes!
You might just get my vote again!
This is so wrong on so many levels. But what else can we expect from Obama?
Congressman, I hope you read this message: I’m in your district. I want you to fight this tooth and toenail. For us to give up space exploration is to sound the death knell for our country: those that do not continue to expand, learn and grow will die.
Fight this, sir! FIGHT IT!
Your points sir, are right on the money! These Mars zealots who think that by killing renewed Lunar exploration, that they are going to get their Red Planet-or-else agenda done anytime soon, are sordidly mistaken! Everybody knows that the Augustine commission was fully infiltrated by these hard-headed, inflexible morons! So let me get this straight: the U.S. can spend fourty freaking years in low earth orbit, and now the Mars fanatics would demand that we devote even more decades to that activity, because they find Moon exploration so unrewarding. Groups like the Planetary Society actually have an anywhere-but-the-Moon agenda. They’d have us stuck in LEO until they could get NASA to do an asteroid space mission. But what really is so damned important about getting astronauts to another airless & crater-pock-marked worldlet, if they deny any possible value of the Lunar surface—at the same time? Why would an asteroid be a superior proving ground for landing systems?? To go to the Red Planet you would STILL need to deal with a strong & deep gravity well. And in the case of a really small asteroid, you can’t even actually “land” on one! You’d have to sort-of “dock” with it—as its gravity is so negligible. A lot of the assumptions of the Mars enthusiast crowd are just plain wrong. How about other issues such as dust management and solar flare protection?? Do they really think that 40, 50, or even 60 years in LEO in a space station is going to be adequate training & preparation for all that?! We need a reality check here, boys! The Moon BEFORE Mars—-it’s the only prudent way to go.
As if the NASA bureaucracy is actually worth the $20 billion it annually costs us taxpayers? If results are the goal, then why doesn’t NASA simply offer competitive prizes to get the Shuttle-replacement and other goals accomplished? Such an approach would reward results, instead of mere viewgraphs, wasted hardware and pork barreling beneficiaries. An adequate prize could be offered through this still drastically underfunded competitive prizes program which gets well under 1% of NASA’s nearly $20 billion annual budget:
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http://www.centennialchallenges.nasa.gov
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Isn’t it time our pork-barreling elected officials finally meaningfully and responsively answered that increasingly-asked question? Why do they keep nixing funding for Centennial Challenges? Does their buying votes with our tax dollars really entitle them to keep selling out our country’s space prospects? And is it in the NASA clique’s best interest to let Google’s own prize continue to be worth so much more than NASA’s?
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http://www.GoogleLunarXPrize.org
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When Google decided it wanted video footage from the Moon, did it hire central planners, NASA-style, or did it simply offer a competitive prize for rewarding actual results instead of mere viewgraphs, wasted hardware and pork barreling beneficiaries? Rest assured Google didn’t adopt the former approach. Google doesn’t get to feed on our tax-dollars, or avoid paying taxes like NASA always has. Why aren’t our elected officials asking these questions instead of simply holding their hands out for pork from an increasingly empty federal trough?