Wednesday, the Space Shuttle Discovery began its roll to the launch pad, which will culminate in the May 15 launch of the Return to Flight Mission. It will be the first shuttle launch since the Columbia tragedy in February 2003. NASA says this mission will mark a new dedication to safety and concern for its astronauts. While this is commendable, the recent problems at NASA -- the Columbia disaster, the repeated failures of the Mars landers, etc. -- suggest it might be time to re-evaluate NASA's role in space exploration.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy made a call to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. The response was massive public interest and a huge expansion of the space program that led, ultimately, to the moon landing on July 21, 1969.
Since that day, however, the public's interest in space travel has waned significantly. The Apollo program was cut short because of a lack of public interest and therefore budget support from Congress. Just recently, when President Bush called for NASA to move ahead with a program to land a man on Mars, the idea was mostly ignored or ridiculed.
Because space travel no longer captures the interest of the public, except for when terrible tragedies occur, Congress has cut NASA's budget time and time again. These budgets cuts led to an administration that took dangerous shortcuts in safety that ultimately cost the Columbia astronauts their life.
All around the world, in fact, government-funded space agencies are finding themselves woefully inadequate to the tasks they've set for themselves. Most contributing nations are impossibly far behind on their parts of the International Space Station. NASA is down to three flyable spacecraft, none of which have been in service for over two years. We rely on the Russians to supply our astronauts on the Space Station. Russia's space program, for those who aren't aware, has been a litany of disasters almost since its inception.
Meanwhile, just last year, Burt Rutan, along with Scaled Composites, built and flew the first privately owned spacecraft. In doing so, they claimed the Ansari X-Prize, a $10 million purse to the first person or company to build and fly a reusable vehicle to space.
Many have said this achievement is insignificant, because the flight was basically the equivalent of an early 1960s Mercury launch.
However, consider this. The cost of the Mercury project, in today's dollars, was nearly $2 billion.
The total cost of Rutan's SpaceShipOne project? Around $20 million. Now Virgin, Inc. has purchased the technology and begun work on a fleet of commercial space ships, scheduled to begin flight in late 2007.
It is clear that private designers and corporations are the future of space travel. They are able to adopt newer and safer technologies far more quickly and at less cost, while NASA is stuck flying hazard-prone shuttles that were supposed to be replaced a decade ago. While NASA should by no means be abolished, its role could be changed to be a more effective force. With the emergence of this fledgling private-sector space industry, perhaps NASA should take its cues from government-sponsored aviation prizes in the early 20th century and provide more incentives like the X-prize. This will help to fuel competition in an industry potential to become a great boon to the economy in the near future.
Write to Tim at
redbaron.strikesagain@gmail.com
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